


what it was

by nightbloomings



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Shenko - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-01
Updated: 2013-03-01
Packaged: 2017-12-03 23:22:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 30
Words: 36,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/703822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightbloomings/pseuds/nightbloomings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of short pieces - some drabbles, some oneshots, some a little longer. Kaidan Alenko and Selina Shepard, from ME1 onwards & largely from Kaidan's POV. Consisting mostly of original scenes, but with a few in-game scenes that have been reimagined, as well. Written for the 30 Days of Writing challenge on tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Beginning

There’s a trick to beginnings. Sometimes they pass you by, cloaked in insignificance, to the point where you can never remember the what or the when, but you have a vague sense of  _it just was_. Of course, there’s the sort that, no matter how much you try – or how many  _things_  you consume – you’ll never be able to forget. Every detail remains imprinted to your brain forever, and you deal with it.

But then, there are those few beginnings that you want cling to, sometimes out of nostalgia or desperation, or some fucked up mix of the two. Moments like these are rare, but sometimes you’re lucky enough to know at the time exactly just how significant they are.

Kaidan knew. After all, it didn’t take a great deal of foresight to know that being posted to the Alliance’s newest and most advanced frigate, on the heels of a promotion, with every move and decision under the scrutiny of every type of brass imaginable, would be a pivotal moment.

Pressly, Adams, Chakwas, Moreau and Alenko, were all lined up at attention portside of the Normandy in the docking bay of the Citadel, waiting for Captain Anderson to escort the ship’s hitherto-unannounced XO on board.

“Oh, shit,” Joker whispered hoarsely under his breath.

Kaidan looked to his left, following Joker’s eyes down the line of officers.

“It’s Shepard, she’s the XO.” Joker turned and looked at him expectantly, probably waiting for some similar sort of reaction.

Of course Kaidan had heard the rumours about the hero of Elysium – namely that she was a humourless, no-bull taskmaster, to put it nicely – and yeah, there was a bit of trepidation there. But he wasn’t about to let the Alliance rumour mill colour his opinion of someone. That didn’t make her any less intimidating, though.

So he simply shrugged and put his eyes forward again. “Relax, Joker. She’s meant to be your XO, not your buddy.”

Kaidan heard Joker mumble something in response, and then the timbre of Anderson’s voice was more audible, signalling that he and Shepard were advancing down the line.

“And this is Flight Lieutenant Moreau, helmsman of the Normandy,” Anderson stated as he and Shepard stopped in front of Joker.

From the corner of his eye, he watched Joker pull a salute, but it wasn’t as sharp as it could’ve, or should’ve, been – obviously, a gesture with a not-quite subtle meaning.

And not one that Shepard missed, evidently. She gave the slightest chuckle and returned an equally lazy salute.

“Helmsman,” she said pointedly. “You’re quite the prodigy, I’ve heard.”

The beam of pride in Joker’s voice was practically audible. “So say the commendations in my file, ma’am.”

Kaidan winced. But to his surprise, Shepard simply nodded and gave Joker a light pat on the shoulder. “Good – pride in your work is an important quality to have, Lieutenant. I look forward to seeing you in action.”

And then, there they stood in front of Kaidan, his commanding officers. He pulled a tight salute, feeding so much tension into the gesture that his fingers bent back slightly. He knew he’d get a rib from Joker over it later, but no one ever forgot a good first impression.

“Staff Lieutenant Alenko, Shepard.”

Shepard appraised him for a moment, and then saluted back with an equal amount of precision. “Just recently promoted, correct? Well done Lieutenant,” she said, giving him as much of a smile as was appropriate with the Captain beside her.

Kaidan’s lip twitched, instinct telling him to return the gesture but he stopped himself. Instead, he nodded once and answered solemnly, “Thank you, ma’am.”

Anderson passed behind Shepard and moved towards the airlock at Kaidan’s right. As he did, Shepard gave Kaidan a quick wink and said, low under her breath, “At ease, Lieutenant,” before following behind Anderson.

Kaidan let out the breath he’d been holding and fought against the urge to look after her.

Joker scoffed and shoved Kaidan in the shoulder, pushing him towards the airlock. “Damn, Alenko – you want to try smouldering a  _little_  less in front of the hot XO?”

The embarrassment burned all the way up to the tips of Kaidan’s ears, but Joker couldn’t be given the upper hand. “Watch yourself, Moreau – don’t make me pull rank.”

“Okay, you just barely outrank me, man,” Joker retorted, following Kaidan into the decontamination field. “Besides, I’d like to see you get anywhere in this baby without me.”

That was a point that wasn’t worth arguing; not with Joker, not even simply to rile him. Kaidan had been subjected to the pilot’s laundry list of achievements a few times too many from his position in the co-pilot’s seat, and didn’t need another rundown given to him just for spite.

Past the decon and on the bridge, Anderson was introducing Shepard to the bridge crew. She looked over her shoulder at that moment and caught Kaidan’s eye, offering up another smile, but this time it was something broader, warmer.

Caught off guard, Kaidan smiled back, his instinct getting the better of him.

“Ho shit, Alenko,” Joker said with a sigh, tugging on Kaidan’s arm to pull him back to his post in the cockpit. “You’re in for it now.”

Kaidan slid into the co-pilot’s seat without answering. Again, he couldn’t argue; not with Joker, not with the acrobatics his stomach had just pulled over Shepard’s smile.

Joker set to readying the Normandy to pull away from the dock, his fingers flying over the hologram consoles in front of him. “You’ve done it. You’ve cracked the supposedly-uncrackable Commander Shepard.” He looked at Kaidan from the corner of his eye, anciticpating his reaction.

“You don’t know that any of that scuttlebutt’s true.”

Joker shrugged. “I don’t need to know if it’s  _true_ , Alenko. All that matters is that  _smile_.”

“It was just a smile!” Kaidan said incredulously. He knew Joker was just trying to rile him, and frankly, it was working.

“That’s all it takes, man. A smile like that is the only in that you need.” Anderson’s voice cut in over the comm system, giving Pressly their next destination; the coordinates popped up in front of Joker a moment later. “Mark my words, Alenko. Now stop bothering me, I have to pilot this thing.”


	2. Accusation

Kaidan paid close attention to Shepard on Eden Prime. It had been their first planet excursion, and while it would have been naïve for him to assume that the whole thing would unfold according to plan, he could never have prepared for what actually happened.

First, there were the geth. Beyond the Veil for the first time in centuries, and that was fucked up enough. But it wasn’t the worst of it.

Because the husks came next. Grotesque manipulations of the human form, and for every one that he overloaded or tossed into the air before gunning, he knew he was attacking his own kind. At least it felt that way, somehow.

And then, there was Nihlus and Saren and betrayal, with more geth and more husks.

Through everything, before the beacon and after, Kaidan watched Shepard. If he was to follow her into battle, and to see that her orders were followed by the rest of the crew, he needed to know her tells, to know when she was at her own edge. But, through the clusterfuck of  _wrong_  on Eden Prime, Shepard had remained calm.

It wasn’t long before they were back on the Citadel, facing the Council and Saren. Kaidan watched as Shepard stood before them. Anderson did what he could, and Udina barely that much, to support her but still her accusations were refuted and suddenly she became the accused. And still, she remained calm.

Kaidan stood with Ashley from a respectful distance and watched as Anderson ceded command of the Normandy and its crew to Shepard. But it was a package deal – along with the vessel came her mission: to go on a wild goose chase through the whole of the galaxy to track down one rogue Spectre. The only advice Anderson offered to Shepard had been to investigate some far flung Prothean ruins, and still, she remained calm.

An hour later, after immediate paperwork had been drawn up and authorisations granted, the crew of the Normandy took their positions under their new commander. Shepard stood perched before the massive holographic galaxy map in the CIC. Kaidan watched as she braced herself with both hands on the handles there. She bent forward at the waist, allowing her head to drop forward until it occupied the space between her arms, and she took a few deep breaths. Kaidan took a step forward, positive that now she was about to  _finally_  crack, and anticipating a need to step in. Shepard stayed in that position for a few moments longer, and then straightened to full height with another deep breath, eyes forward.

 “Joker, take us to the Attican Beta, to Feros,” she said over the comm, and still, she remained calm.


	3. Restless

Kaidan shuffled into the mess, his eyes slowly adjusting to the light. He squinted more than was really necessary, hoping to avoid any bolts of pain behind his eyes – he already felt like a metric tonne of garbage, no need to complicate things further. He reached for the fridge and retrieved a vitamin shake, popping open the lid with one finger as he moved to one of the higher cupboards. He took a slow, deep sip of the shake and tried to ignore its chalky faux-vanilla flavour as he perused the options before him. Alliance vessels had never been known for their gourmet food options, and the Normandy was no exception, despite the hefty Council budget. He wrestled two energy bars free from a box with his spare hand and pushed the cupboard closed with an elbow. He moved towards the large table on the other side of the room divider, attempting to open one of the energy bars with his teeth as he walked.

“Lieutenant Alenko, you’re up rather late.”

Kaidan made a strangled noise and froze in his tracks. He scrambled to free up his left hand and then pulled as crisp a salute as he could manage, three hours into a significant migraine and with a mouthful of vitamin shake, which he promptly swallowed. “Commander Shepard.”

“At ease Lieutenant. Sorry, I didn’t mean to surprise you.”

Kaidan shook his head, feeling supremely awkward. “Not at all, ma’am. I was just getting a snack.” Shepard glanced down at his provisions, all held in one hand, and then gave a nod.  _A ‘snack’? How old are you, Alenko – twelve?_

“Have a seat, if you like,” she said, gesturing across from her. “Just going over a few reports.”

Kaidan moved to the table and sat down, thankful to unload his hands. Shepard was dressed down, wearing a tank top with the N7 logo emblazoned over the right breast –  _and whose bright idea was_ that _logo placement anyway_ – and her hair freed from its usual topknot. It was disarming, to say the least.

She put down the datapad she’d been holding and reached for the mug to her right. She leaned back slightly and met his eyes over the rim of the mug as she sipped from it, tendrils of steam rising from whatever was inside.

“You grab midnight snacks often, Alenko?”

Kaidan shook his head, feeling a blush start to creep over his cheeks. “No, ma’am. Just having a hard time sleeping tonight, that’s all.”

“Oh?”

He’d been holding off on telling her – or anyone else, frankly – about the headaches. He preferred to get through them on his own, as inconspicuously as possible. He took another sip of his shake, trying to stall, but she kept looking at him, waiting for an elaboration.

“Just a headache.”

She nodded and put down her mug, leaning forward as she did, crossing her arms and resting her elbows on the table. “From the implants.”

It was a statement, not a question. So she knew, somehow. “Yes, ma’am. The L2 models can sometimes lead to –”

“Complications,” she interjected. “I know, my last CO was an L2. He’d be on his ass for hours sometimes. You ever get that bad, Lieutenant?”

“No, tonight’s an exception,” he lied.

Shepard nodded slowly, and he knew she didn’t believe him. But at least she had the decency not to call him out. “I was feeling restless, myself – my mind’s all over the place tonight.”

“Yeah, it was a hell of a day…”

“I’d say something like, ‘if I ever see another geth rocket trooper again…’ but that’s just blatant false hope,” she said dryly.

Kaidan chuckled. Under the table, he shoved the energy bars into his pocket, suddenly too embarrassed to eat them in front of her. “I’m afraid you’re probably right about that, Commander.”

Shepard gave a small smile, and then turned back to her datapad. Kaidan watched her from the corner of his eye, noticing the way she idly twirled a lock of her dark hair over her fingers, stopping only to intermittently swipe at the datapad screen. She drummed out a gentle rhythm on the table with her spare hand. He pulled up his omni-tool, and checked through a few unread messages, his headache having abated enough that he could handle the light output. The silence was comfortable, or at least it seemed to be for her. It would have been for him, if not for that N7 logo distracting him and luring his eye to pass over the swells that sat beneath it. The hair twirling wasn’t helping much either; he could imagine what the tresses would feel like between his fingers. His right hand twitched involuntarily, and he was thankful then for such phenomena as social mores and central nervous system control.

Shepard let out a sigh a minute later and looked up at him again, pushing the datapad away. “I can’t concentrate on this thing, I’ve got too much going on up here.” She tapped a slender finger to her temple.

Kaidan looked at her for what he was positive was too long without speaking. He had no idea how to talk to her, in this ‘non-official’ capacity. She was so laid back that it made him nervous. “When I’m feeling restless like that at night, I go watch some old vid. That usually works.”

Shepard looked down, her sooty lashes grazing her cheek, and she smiled some sort of half smile. Kaidan didn’t know what he’d said exactly to elicit the smirk, but he did know that he wanted to do it again, somehow. She rose from the table then, gathering the datapad and the still-steaming mug in one hand.

“Thanks for the advice, Alenko,” she said, as she moved to his side and gave him a single pat on the shoulder. “But I have to confess something.” She turned and leaned her ass against the table, her thigh just barely brushing against his left arm.

 _Deep breath, Alenko._ “Oh?” He concentrated on not glancing down at her thigh, or her ass, or anything generally below her face.

“Yeah. It’s not an overactive brain, or even this dull report keeping me up tonight.” She paused and looked him in the eye. He swallowed hard and felt a cold sweat start to break out. “It’s those  _fucking_  Thorian creepers.”

“S-sorry?”

She shoved off from the table and moved towards the mess entrance. “Nothing should just…  _explode_  like that.” She pulled a look of disgust. “Anyway, thanks for the chat, Lieutenant. Get some rest.”


	4. Snowflake

“We’re five minutes out from contact, Commander.”

Selina stood behind Joker’s chair, watching the signals flashing across the flight deck consoles. “And the radar’s still clear?”

“Yes, ma’am, no hostiles detected. You should be alone down there.”

Selina nodded and turned to face Kaidan and Garrus, who were standing just behind her. “Lieutenant, you’re with me planetside. Garrus, I’ll need you to stay here with Joker in case we need to relay with the Normandy from the ground for calibrations.”

“Understood,” Garrus answered, moving to the co-pilot’s seat next to Joker. “Just be careful – some synthetics may not show up on the scans with the comm. towers down. Radio if you need backup and I’ll be there.”

Kaidan followed Selina through the CIC and down the stairs to the crew deck. “For what it’s worth, ma’am, Garrus is right – who knows how accurate those scans really are.”

“Don’t worry Lieutenant,” Selina said as they moved into the elevator. “Intel’s good on this – there hasn’t been any activity on the surface for almost a month. This is a simple land and repair – we need those comm. towers to be up and running if we’re going to manoeuvre our way to Noveria as quietly as possible.”

Kaidan followed Selina to the Mako and climbed into the navigator’s seat. “I suppose at least if surprise geth don’t kill us, then trying to drive this thing over a bunch of ice might do it.”

Selina laughed as she settled in to the driver’s seat next to him. “Your Alliance health plan up to date, Alenko? I only just mastered this thing on dry terrain.”

 

She heard Kaidan choke back a scoff. He wasn’t wrong to doubt her – ‘mastered’ was a liberal exaggeration, really. But perhaps he thought it best not to offend the person who was about to be driving them across a frozen planet.

A few minutes later, the Mako had touched down planetside. “Been a long time since I’ve seen snow,” Selina said, almost wistfully, as they sat stationary & waited for the terrain map to generate.

“Yeah, actually, same for me. But then, Vancouver doesn’t get very much. At least not by the water, anyway.” Kaidan set about plotting a route to the first comm. tower. “To the left, Commander.”

“We’d get lots of it in London. Never stayed as pretty as this for very long, though.” Selina angled her head to get a better look at the sky from the window at her left. “It’d be all brown and dirty within a day.”

“I didn’t know you were from London.”

Selina shrugged. That didn’t surprise her; it wasn’t something she talked about much, so only people with access to her personnel files would have known. She felt comfortable with Kaidan – a little  _too_ comfortable, really. But her past was something that she kept to herself, especially amongst subordinates.

Kaidan must have felt pressure to say something else, because he did a poor impression of clearing his throat. “Anderson’s from London too, isn’t he?”

“He is. Different kind of London from me, though.”  _Decidedly_.

Selina felt Kaidan looking at her. She could elaborate, go into the whole story of her less than normal childhood, but he hadn’t asked for that. Every other time someone learned of her life before the Alliance, they always responded with some sort of knowing nod or scoff – as if every rumour about her and her command tactics had suddenly been given very stable foundation. They were probably right, if she was honest with herself. Eighteen years of consistently living in self-preservation mode probably had informed her approach to a lot of things in life, especially how she lead her detail. But she preferred that to be her own conclusion, not anyone else’s.

Finally, from the corner of her eye, she saw Kaidan return his attention to the map.

“First tower should be on the right, straight ahead, Commander.”

Sure enough, the large comm. tower came into view a few moments later. She parked the Mako a short distance back from the tower, noting that there was virtually no cover on the flat, snowy expanse. Intel was good, sure, but it wasn’t  _perfect_ , and she needed to cover their asses, just in case.

“Look, Commander – the snow around here is completely untouched,” Kaidan said as they approached the tower. “We should be all clear.”

“Good observation, Alenko. Now, it’s fucking cold, so let’s get to the base of that tower A-SAP.”

Kaidan chuckled and gave Selina a small smile. “Aye, aye.” She was sure she’d seen him wink at her too, but she couldn’t be sure. The Lieutenant could hardly hold eye contact with her for more than five seconds, normally – a wink would have been a big step up.

As Kaidan was working at the main console in the tower, an incoming message came through on Selina’s omni-tool.

“Shepard, it’s Garrus.” Selina could only just make out the turian’s face as the hologram skittered and jumped.

“Garrus, I can barely see you. We’re in the first tower.”

“I think something down here must be scrambling the link,” Kaidan supplied, his brow furrowed together as he studied the console.

“Shepard, all clear down there?” Garrus asked, a hint of urgency in his voice.

“We’re good, Garrus. No signs of any recent activity.”

“Let me remind you that I don’t like this. You shouldn’t be down there without backup.”

“We’re  _fine_ , Garrus. We’re not helpless – if anyone comes along, I’ll make Lieutenant Alenko flare near them and blast them to bits.” Selina met Kaidan’s eye when he turned around at the mention of his name, and gave him a wink. She had to suppress a laugh when his cheeks went rosy and he quickly turned back around. “I’ll call you when we’re on our way back.”

“Nice to know you’ve got a plan B figured out…” Kaidan said dryly.

“Always have an escape route,” Selina answered, sidling up next to him. “How are we doing on this?” she took the opportunity to sneak a glance at his profile.

“Almost done,” he said, seemingly oblivious to her eyes studying his face. “Just need to wait for the reboot… and we’re good.”

“Nice work, Lieutenant. Let’s get over to that other tower.”

A half hour later, Kaidan was working at the second comm. tower’s console, but it wasn’t repairing as smoothly as the first – something about needing to override a damaged firewall.

Selina looked out one of the small windows of the tower base, marvelling at how much snow was falling outside. She pulled herself up to sit on one of the crates not far from where Kaidan stood.

He was concentrating on the console, fingers flying over the holographic keys, his jaw drawn into a determined line. It was wholly unfair, really, that someone like him had to be off-limits. It had been a long, long time since she had felt so at east with another person, and they truthfully hadn’t even spent a great deal of time together. She’d had to stop herself from blatantly flirting with him more often than she already did on occasion. But the way that he grew all flustered every time was, admittedly, half the fun.

“This is going to take a bit,” Kaidan said, moving away from the console. “It needs to go through a full scan before I can do anything else.”

“So we wait.”

Kaidan nodded, surveying the small room. “At least there’s no snow in here.”

Selina watched as he moved to the crate next to hears, a faint ripple of muscle passing over his arms through his light armour as he hoisted himself up. “Alenko, when were you last on Earth?”

Kaidan sat forward, bracing his palms on the edge of the crate. “Good question, Commander. I’m probably coming up on a year now. I more or less moved straight to the Normandy from my last posting.”

“And you’ve got people there? Family?”

“Yeah,” he said, a smile spreading across his face. “My parents are in Vancouver, on a little stretch of the waterfront.”

“Sounds nice,” Selina said, returning his smile. “It’s a beautiful city – makes visiting Alliance HQ almost enjoyable.”

“What about you, ma’am? When were you last home?”

Selina busied herself with her hands in her lap. There wasn’t much of a way out now – she’d walked into the question. And she wondered if maybe she’d done it on purpose, subconsciously.

Kaidan cleared his throat when she didn’t answer. “I-I’m sorry, Commander. I didn’t mean to –”

“No, no, it’s fine. I was just there actually, in London. Before coming to the Normandy.”

“Visiting family?”

Selina gave him a crooked smile. “Sort of. I don’t really have any family – per se. but I saw some close friends that have always been like family. There aren’t many of them, but they’ve always been enough.”

Kaidan nodded, then shrugged somewhat. “Family’s family, the way I see it. It’s not always blood relations.”

They looked at each other for a moment – not in any sort of expectant silence, just something comfortable. Selina hadn’t noticed the colour of Kaidan’s eyes before – a warm, sort of honeyed brown – or the trio of birth marks that sat just above his right eyebrow.

“Well…” Kaidan said with a deep exhale. “I guess this should almost be done by now.” He hopped down from the crate and went to check the console.

Selina watched him work for a moment, and then moved to stand over his shoulder. She smelled some sort of cologne on him, only faintly, something she hadn’t ever noticed before. It smelled a bit like cedar. She took a deep breath, trying to calm the nerves that were settling into her stomach.

“How are we, Lieutenant?”

“All set, the system’s back online.”

Selina moved away and patched her radio through to Joker’s channel. “I’ll just make sure Joker can register everything from the Normandy, and then we can head back.”

By the time they reached the Mako, the snow had kicked up into a full flurry. They were both blanketed in the stuff within seconds. The inside of the Mako was freezing, and Selina drove faster than was strictly safe, but Kaidan offered no complaint. Thankfully, the Normandy wasn’t far and they were able to dock quickly.

Back on board, Selina and Kaidan got out of the Mako at the same time, and their eyes met over the top of the vehicle.

“Thanks, Lieutenant. You made quick work of those repairs,” Selina said as she moved away from the Mako.

She saw Kaidan follow her in her periphery until he was walking beside her. “Happy to do it, ma’am.”

Selina stopped walking for a moment, and then called to him when he was a few steps ahead. “Alenko, one more thing.”

Kaidan stopped and turned to face her. “Yes, Commander?”

Selina closed the distance between them. She reached up and swiped the tip of her index finger over the tip of his nose. His mouth fell open slightly, and he looked at her questioningly. She knew she shouldn’t have done it – it really wasn’t appropriate, on any kind of level, to get into a subordinate’s space like that. But, somehow, by the way his eyes held onto hers now after the initial surprise, she didn’t think he’d minded very much.

She gave him a half smile, and held up the tip of her finger to show him a small droplet of water. “Snowflake.”


	5. Knowledge

From the moment he was recruited, Kaidan had always been by-the-book. He’d known the passing requirements for the exams that came before basic, and he’d devoted six months of his life to ensuring that he would be at the top of his entry cohort. He’d always known his rank; he knew to respect those who outranked him, and how to earn the respect of those he outranked. Before every mission he’d ever been on, he’d known what was required of him for success, and he had a commendations list long enough to prove he’d done everything right.

To this point, he’d been lucky enough – as his father had put it – to never need to compromise the rules for his own personal satisfaction. Knowing the rules and following them had given him everything he could have asked for in his military career. Playing the game had made him a commanding officer on the Alliance’s most important frigate, on the most imperative mission the Council had authorised since the Skyllian Blitz, and under the leadership of the Alliance’s most touted Commander.

And therein lay the problem, the game changer.

The rules told him that she was off-limits for as long as she was his CO. He wanted to talk to her, on a personal level, to get to know  _her_. He wanted to take her into his arms, to feel her breasts pressed up against his chest. He wanted to kiss her, to explore her, to see where she was most sensitive. He wanted to delve his fingers inside her, to taste her, to make her writhe and pant and mewl and moan at his touch. He wanted to find his end within her, being gripped tightly about the hips by her supple thighs, his name a breath on her lips. He wanted to be the one to wear away her reserved outward manner, to make her become entirely and beautifully undone. He wanted it all, every night, over and over, but the rules told him ‘no.’ He knew that.

But he also knew that just because something  _shouldn’t_  happen, didn’t mean that it  _wouldn’t._

And that he currently had her pinned against a cabinet in her darkened cabin was all the evidence he needed of  _that_  truism.

It had started earlier that night on the Citadel, at Flux. Kaidan got a few beers deep, and Shepard had winked and smiled and feigned a need for an early night, leading the way back to the ship. He’d hesitated, watched her walk out of the club, unsure of what he should do, or of what she expected him to do.

Joker had been there, had seen it all, and he’d practically pushed Kaidan out the door after her. He’d found her in the mess, with the rest of the ship asleep save for the small contingent of overnight bridge crew.

They’d stood, facing each other, waiting for one of them to concede. He knew that the moment she reached for him, the careful balance between them would be broken – and he was sure that she knew it too.

And then it happened. She’d whispered his name –  _Kaidan_ , not Alenko – reached for his hand, and he’d have been unable to stop himself even if he’d wanted to.

Now she writhed against him, arching her back away from the cabinet behind her, and he felt her breasts press into his chest through their clothing. He inhaled sharply at the feeling and instinctively leaned further into her, their hips nearly flush. He focused on her neck, working his way up from the curve of her collarbone to the sensitive hollow behind her ear. She gasped and trembled, and he couldn’t help but feel a little smug.

Her hands moved to the buttons of his shirt and she made short work of them, quickly relegating the garment to the floor. Her hands were on him, all over him, instantly, fingertips lightly ghosting over his shoulders, carding through his chest hair and drifting down the plane of his stomach. His skin broke into gooseflesh under her touch and he gasped when her fingers danced over the sensitive skin at his sides.

He watched her appraise him, feeling himself grow hard under her eye. He was holding back, trying to resist – he knew himself well enough to know that he was in too deep now, but he didn’t want to damage whatever it was that existed between them. But then she grazed a palm over his erection through his pants and she kept looking him in the eye, goading him on.

He lifted the hem of her shirt up and over her head, burying his face between her breasts as soon as they were exposed to him, tossing her shirt somewhere behind him. He breathed her in deeply, and her hands delved into his hair. He cupped her ass in both hands and kneaded the firm muscles as he nuzzled his mouth behind the fabric of her bra. She mewled and tugged on his hair a little when he passed his hot tongue over her nipple. He felt it tighten in his mouth, inviting him to lave it even more.

“K-Kaidan, I –” He moved up from her breast and claimed her lips, his tongue cutting her words short. He was completely lost in her; every external sensation was her for him, at that moment.

She pushed against him gently, directing him away from the cabinet. She led him with her mouth, walking backwards towards her desk and then she turned, pushing him down to lean against the edge of it.

Her hands moved to the buckle of his belt, and the grazing of her fingers over his lower belly snapped him back to reality.

“Shepard,” he whispered against her mouth, between kisses. She was working the button of his pants now, and he knew that there’d only be a few moments before he’d not have the will to stop her. “Shepard,” he repeated, more insistent and pulling away slightly.

“Kaidan, I’d say we’re on a first name basis now, wouldn’t you?” She’d practically purred, and he had to suppress a low moan at the sound.

She went for his lips again, and he relented for a moment, feeding her hungry kiss. She was slowly eroding all of his resolve, but he had to stop this before it all went too far, so he pulled away again.

“Don’t think I don’t want to, Selina,” he said hoarsely when she eyed him quizzically. “Because I do. A lot. But we both know that we can’t, not right now.”

Shepard sighed and leaned forward into his chest, wrapping her arms around his neck. “Yeah.”

He hugged her, burying his nose into her hair and inhaling deeply.

Shepard laughed lightly into the curve of his neck. “You always been so by-the-book, Alenko?”


	6. Flame

Kaidan almost wished it could be different, that he could have a stronger will to resist Shepard and the incessant burn that he felt for her.

He tried for a while to ignore it, to focus on the work that lay before them. But that was daunting and never-ending, and sometimes it was just easier to think of other things. Like her scent, or the way she’d moved and moaned under his hand.

He was a pragmatic person at the end of the day, and so he realised that attempting to fight against her hold on him was like trying to win a war of attrition. The encounter in Shepard’s darkened cabin the week before had been a spark to a flame – a flame that was now growing rapidly and turning his resolve into little more than scorched earth.

At first, he could take himself in hand and sate his desires to memories of her and of that night, but before long he simply need  _more_. So he sought her out, or she’d find him, and they’d steal away to some clandestine spot away from the ceaseless activity of the rest of the ship. He’d worship her with his mouth, his hands, his words – any way he could while keeping their clothing in tact. They seemed to reach an unspoken consensus that so long as clothing remained on their persons, they weren’t breaking regs  _quite_  so blatantly. He knew that stipulation was only going to stay in place for long, however.

This particular night had started as an idle one, the Normandy making its way through the Sentry Omega. They were to land on Virmire the next day to neutralise a rogue VI. But with at least ten hours until approach, Kaidan decided to hole up in starboard observation.

The Normandy boasted a surprisingly vast collection of twenty first century classics – or relics, as most would probably call them. He leaned back in one of the oversized leather chairs with one of them, eager to lose himself in some other world for a few hours.

Not more than twenty pages in, the door hissed open.

“Hey there,” Shepard said quietly as she strode towards him.

“Hey… Commander.”

“Still sticking with the titles, I see. Well then, Staff Lieutenant Alenko, what are we reading?” She moved to stand beside his chair, leaning in slightly to get a closer look.

He cleared his throat, largely for effect, and then closed the book with a satisfying snap. “Do you really care all that much, Shepard?” He looked up at her and gave her a half smile.

Shepard returned his smile and shook her head. “Not particularly, no.” She moved away from him then, back towards the door. He panicked briefly that she was going to leave, but instead she activated the lock. “I was hoping to distract you, actually,” she said, turning back to face him.

“Is that so?”

“Mmm-hmm.” She came towards him slowly, her hands working to untie her hair.

Kaidan pulled himself up in the chair and took in a deep breath – he rarely saw her with her long, dark hair loose, but he preferred it this way, as it fell about her shoulders.

“Are you okay with a little company, Kaidan?” She stood before him now, and she ran her fingers through the hair at his temple, tucking a few longer ends behind his ear.

He leaned his face into her hand slightly before reaching for her hips to draw her into him. “You don’t need to ask me that.”

“I know,” she said with a slight smirk before she kissed him.

He pulled her into his lap and she straddled him, cradling the back of his head in her hands. His hands travelled slowly upwards from her hips, feeling her heated skin through her tank top. She nipped at his lower lip and then swept her tongue into his mouth and he let out a low groan at the feeling of it – soft and hot as it wove around his own.

He was hard within moments, and she noticed, grinding down into his lap slightly. His hips met hers instinctively, and they built up to a slow sort of rhythm.

Kaidan knew he’d be finished in a matter of minutes if they kept that up, the friction too good. Shepard’s hands were making quick work the shirt he wore, and she helped him to navigate the long sleeves, still maintaining her hold on his lips, separating only long enough to remove the garment completely. Her hands instantly went for the button of his pants, but he clamped a hand over hers to stop her.

“Not so fast,” he ground out, the last syllable nearly indiscernible from a grunt as she rolled her hips down into him.

He quickly swept her top over her head, and began to suckle on the soft skin of her neck as he worked the clasps of her bra. When her breasts were finally free to him, he let out a slight groan and took one of her nipples in his mouth. Shepard arched forward and he followed her movements as he laved the bud with his tongue.

Shepard mewled and panted, gripping him by the shoulder for leverage. His pants had grown uncomfortably tight, but he had to get through hers before he could get to his own.

“Kaidan.” Her voice was a hushed moan and her fingernails dug into his skin as a wave of pleasure coursed through her. “Kaidan, we can’t do this.”

He’d managed to get her pants open by then. “I know,” he huffed, delving his hand below the waistband and stroking upwards against her clit.

“Ohhh – don’t stop, Kaidan.”

“I’m not going to.”

He stroked her a few more times, the wetness of her nearly sending him into frenzy. And then she pulled away, standing up. She quickly discarded her pants, leaving her with just a pair of pale pink underwear to preserve her dignity.

“I’ve had enough of these too,” she whispered, tugging as his pants. He couldn’t have agreed more, as he lifted his hips to let her slide the pants down and away.

Kaidan couldn’t help but notice that she’d taken his boxers too. He was also aware of the fact that his was as naked as they’d been around each other, which felt like something of a momentous occasion, really, but also something that didn’t necessarily need to be addressed at that exact moment.

He watched as Shepard slowly lowered herself onto her knees between his thighs, his breath caught in his throat. She held his eye as she took his cock into her hand and slowly passed her thumb over the tip, catching the pre-cum there. He inhaled sharply, his fingers gripping into the armrests of the chair tightly. Then she bent forward and placed the slightest kiss to the tip before she slowly ran her tongue in a circle around the head, and he screwed his eyes shut, not sure that he could handle the visual stimulus on top of everything else. She took all of him into her mouth, working him with her hands and tongue, drawing moan after gasp after hiss out of him.

When her hair fell forward, obstructing his view, he carefully brushed it out of the way, back over her shoulder and he trailed his fingertips against her skin as he brought his hand away. He was trying to hold his composure, but it had been a while… a  _long_  while, since he’d had someone else attend to him.

She must have sensed his tension, somehow, maybe from the way his moans were coming more strained, because she reached for his hand and gave it a slight squeeze before weaving their fingers together. It was a subtle thing, but he took it as an encouragement.

Then Shepard ran her tongue up the underside of his cock, pressing against the ridge there and he bucked up into her. She’d anticipated it and moved to accommodate him, replacing her mouth with her palm gripping around him tightly. The added friction and pressure were nearly too much for him before she took him back into her mouth. He let out a harsh grunt as he came, bucking his hips again. Shepard laid a hand on his stomach to still him, and finished him off gently as he rode out the last faint surges of pleasure.

Shepard sat up further on her knees, drawing her hands up his stomach to his chest. He caught her by the wrists and pulled her up as he stood.

“Sit,” he said, turning them around. She looked at him for a second, as if she’d not understood. He pushed down on her shoulder until she’d landed in the chair. “You’re turn.”

“Oh?”

Kaidan didn’t answer as he knelt in front of her, drawing a lean leg up and hooking it over his shoulder. “I always play fair, Shepard.”

Shepard gave a throaty chuckle and she drew him closer into her with the leg that rested as his back. “Ohh, you’re good.”

Kaidan simply smiled up at her before he brought his mouth down to the apex of her thighs, nuzzling into her wet panties, and he heard her breath hitch. He moved the fabric out of the way, and ghosted a hot breath over her, making her moan loudly. He wanted to savour her as much as possible, but he wanted to undo her even more, so he didn’t tease. Instead, he licked slowly upwards with the breadth of his tongue, flicking up slightly at her clit, and then starting over. She ground into his mouth, gasping, and he moved with her, suckling at her clit. Shepard moaned as he drew on her, her hands delving into his hair and gripping into it. He fucked her with his tongue at a slow pace, nudging up at her clit with the bridge of his nose with each movement.

She cried out, and tightened her hands in his hair, holding his head exactly where she wanted it. He obliged, covering her clit with his mouth and running his tongue over it gently, repeatedly. Then she came, his name a chant on her lips and he held his tongue to her until she shuddered.

Shepard ran a hand through her hair to draw it away from her face. She shifted to the side slightly to make room for him in the chair, falling back against him as he settled.

“Okay, that really can’t happen again, Alenko…” she muttered.

He chuckled and snaked an arm around her waist. “Sure thing, Commander.”


	7. Prepared

When it came to missions under her command, Selina was nothing if not prepared. Virmire had been no exception. She’d read every scrap of intel that she could get her hands on, both through the Alliance and through other, less official channels. She’d anticipated possible inferences and devised exit strategies for each. She’d identified a handful of rendezvous points and evac zones, demarcating the most convenient on Joker’s consoles, with certain code names assigned to each for easy reference. She’d even studied weather scans from the last year to anticipate any conditions that might impact their movement.

And even after all of her research and practicalities had gone for naught, she had still steeled herself mentally that one of them, any of them, or even all of them, could die. It was part of her duty, and everything that she did in the name of it, to prepare herself and her team for that possibility. It was pragmatism, and all part and parcel of the job they’d all signed on to do.

But what Selina hadn’t – and couldn’t ever have – prepared for was that any casualty would be on her hands, a direct result of a singular decision that she’d made.

And now, with it all being said and done, she sat slumped in the desk chair in her cabin at 0400 hours, a full 12 hours since the Normandy had evacuated Virmire’s atmosphere. She’d first taken the seat at 2100 hours, after the briefings and reports and a message sent to the Alliance Casualty Assistance Division that had taken her four attempts to write. The conference call with the Chief Casualty Officer was to take place at 0730 hours, and she knew she ought to sleep at some point before then. But as she’d sat in that chair, replaying the events of the day over and over in her head, she’d come to face the realisation of exactly what her justification had been for the choice –  _her_ choice – on Virmire.

If she were less than honest with herself, she could simply say that Kaidan was higher ranking, more experienced, a better asset to the crew given his unmatched biotics, and that any one of those reasons had been her justification. Those were all legitimate considerations, she knew, and nothing that the brass would rebuke her for. But they were also considerations that she hadn’t made when she’d made that split-second decision. Her choice had been visceral, instinctual. One distinct thought had passed through her mind at that moment when she had Alenko and Williams on the same comm. line, both urging her to save the other –  _Kaidan_ , get to  _Kaidan_. Not because of his service record or his field prowess or his rank as her second in command, or any other pragmatic qualifier that she could attach to him. It was simply that he was who he was: Kaidan.

And as she sat, wracked by guilt and tears, she came to terms a little bit more with who  _she_  was.


	8. Order

Kaidan tried to keep up with Shepard as she stormed through the Presidium, moving his feet double-time. He knew better than to try and slow her, so he simply followed her and hoped that she didn’t careen into anybody too important. But somehow she managed to weave between the civilians with considerable grace – there were a few near-misses, but she was surprisingly talented as barreling through a crowd without incident.

They made it back to the Normandy in record time, and walked into the decon field. They waited in the scan, and after a few moments, Shepard let out a huff. “Why does this thing always take so  _fucking_  long?”

Kaidan realised then that he didn’t actually know Shepard all that well, not a personal level. It didn’t surprise him that she was angry, but her outburst wasn’t what he would have expected from her. The last time they’d had a run-in with the Council, she’d been so calm, almost unnervingly so. But now she was rattled, and he had no idea how to talk her down.

When they were finally through the airlock, he paused to see which direction she would head. She moved right and stalked off, probably towards the comm. room. Kaidan turned left, to the flight deck.

“I take it that things didn’t go swell with the Council again?” Joker said, turning to look at Kaidan.

“Not really, no.” Kaidan shook his head and exhaled sharply.

“Well? To Ilos then?”

“No, Joker. We’re grounded.”

“Grounded?! What the… Man, that takes quite a set, to put Shepard on lockdown.”

Kaidan scoffed. “Yeah… something like that.”

Just then, the Normandy’s comm. system crackled to life. “Lieutenant Alenko to the comm. room, please. A-SAP.”

Joker laughed and turned his chair back around. “Looks like the Commander’s figured out exactly how she wants to work off some of that stress…”

Kaidan tamped down the smirk that tugged at the corner of his mouth and reached around Joker’s chair, swatting upwards at the bill of his cap, knocking it off his head. “I’d tell you to get back to work, but given the circumstances, just… mind your own business.”

When he reached the comm. room, he found Shepard pacing a short track. He watched for a moment longer, then walked forward and put a hand tentatively on her shoulder.

“You’re going to wear a whole into the floor, Shepard.”

She looked at him pointedly. “What the fuck else am I supposed to do, Kaidan? I feel like a bug that’s been trapped under an upended glass.”

“I understand that, Shepard, but we have to look at this practically. The Council gave an order and yeah, we don’t work for them, but they have their hands on this ship just as much as the Alliance does.”

Shepard scoffed and moved away from Kaidan’s hand. “They may have paid for all of this, Kaidan, but this is  _my_  ship, and I do not get grounded for doing my job.” She grounded the words out, enunciating every syllable. “Don’t you see what they’ve done? They’ve reduced us to little more than a band of fucking mercs that they can fire whenever they think they’re in too deep.”

“That’s not what this is. We’re still Alliance at the end of the day. They can’t just do this.”

“No, that’s exactly what this is! And they’ve gone and done it anyway, so here we are.” Shepard went to sit in one of the chairs along the edge of the room. “I need to know that you’re with me on this.”

Kaidan followed Shepard and sat in the chair next to her, turning to face her. “Of course, Shepard – the whole crew is behind you, you know that.”

“I don’t mean the crew, Kaidan. I mean  _you_.”

She slumped forward, resting her elbows on her knees and cradling her forehead in her hands. Her eyes were screwed shut, and as he watched her, trying to find the right words, he realised that it wasn’t going to be about what he said. Shepard didn’t need a yes-man standing over her shoulder reaffirming everything that she already knew. She was impulse and action, and frankly, chaos, and she needed a counterpoint, some opposing force that could give her some sort of order.

Kaidan moved to kneel in front of Shepard. “Hey,” he said quietly, gently wrapping his fingers around her wrists and pulling them away from her face. “Of course I am.”

Shepard met his eyes and gave him a weak smile before she leaned forward and wrapped her arms around him. She buried her face into the curve of his neck, and he pressed a small kiss to her cheek.

“Shepard, I have to ask you… why’s this affected you so much? You’ve always been so calm when dealing with the Council’s bullshit.”

Shepard pulled away and shrugged a little. “This is personal now, after Virmire, and Saren, and…” she paused, heaving a deep sigh. “And Ashley…”

Kaidan nodded and ran a thumb over the back of her hand. “We’ll figure this out, Shepard. Somehow.”

Shepard looked down at his thumb as it passed over her skin, and then shifted her hand to intertwine their fingers. She looked back up at him, and leaned forward, her eyes fluttering closed.

Kaidan felt a jolt shoot through him as he anticipated her kiss, his tongue darting out instinctively to moisten his lips. They were just about to connect when the familiar crackle of the Normandy’s comm. system came again.

“Commander, Captain Anderson’s on the comm. link for you,” Joker announced, before pausing a beat. “He says it’s kinda urgent, so…”

Kaidan felt a hot blush bloom over his cheeks and all the way up to his ears. “That jackass better not be spying on you…” he mumbled.

Shepard chuckled and stood up, straightening her shirt. “Maybe next time we can give him a show? That would keep him quiet for a while.”


	9. Tremble

They’d heard it well before they’d seen it, that giant mass of metal toppling from its former perch as its grip on the Citadel weakened. It came upon them with a great high pitched peal, and Shepard yelled a warning and they all dove, in directions completely determined by instinct. Kaidan and Garrus moved left, Shepard right, just as the extinguished reaper crashed, bringing the rest of the Council Chambers down upon them.

Kaidan came to, a dull throb pulsating deep in his head. It was impossibly dark, and he could tell that he wasn’t alone by the white lights of Garrus’ armour sitting a few feet ahead. Kaidan shifted and slowly pulled himself up to sitting. He tried to use a biotic flare as a flashlight, but he was too weak and he emitted only a faint wisp of pale blue energy. He groped towards the lights of Garrus’ armour, and he shook the turian when his hand connected with the metal.

“Garrus,” Kaidan said hoarsely, straining to see exactly how Garrus was situated. “Garrus, can you hear me?”

Garrus shifted, letting out a deep groan. “Alenko, you’re okay?”

“Considering the circumstances… You?”

Kaidan heard the scrape of metal against metal and stone as Garrus raised himself up. “I feel like I’ve just been sat on by a reaper.”

Kaidan huffed in some weakened approximation of a chuckle, wincing at the sharp waves of pain that cursed through his middle. He realised that Shepard couldn’t be trapped in the same air pocket as them – the space was far too small to conceal a third person. The pain was then replaced with a swift and deep-seated panic.

“Garrus, which way did Shepard go? Did you see?”

Garrus grunted as he brought his arm to access his omni-tool. “To the right, I think. I only saw a flash of red from her armour before all of this came down.”

A cold sweat began to form along Kaidan’s brow as he began to think the worst. He tried to pull up his own omni-tool, but it only came as a faint orange static. “This is busted, how’s yours?”

“Good, thankfully. I’ve just sent a ping to C-Sec… No idea what’s even left of them at this point, but hopefully something gets through.”

Kaidan let out a shaky breath and ran a hand through his grimy, dust-coated hair.

“Hey… She’s going to be okay, Alenko. Shepard’s a tough kid.”

Kaidan nodded weakly, in a poor attempt to make himself feel convinced, since it was too dark for Garrus to have seen. He knew Shepard was tough – she was the toughest solder he’d ever served with. But she was still made of flesh and bone and mortal life, all things that could easily be punctured, crushed or extinguished with enough force. It could easily have come down to luck, that the left had been the right direction to go.

He laid his head back against the concrete slab behind him, which caused the blood to thrum loudly through his ears as some sort of rhythmic confirmation of his own life, and the uncertainty of Shepard’s.

……

He didn’t know how long it had been, but finally he and Garrus heard muffled noises just outside their enclave.

His first thought was of Shepard, some faint hope that she’d managed to reach them first. But that was dashed almost instantly as he heard the familiar timbre of Captain Anderson’s voice calling out to them.

“Here – in here,” Garrus called back, angling the light of his omni-tool in the direction of the voices.

The rubble around them shifted and faint rays of light started to peek through to the right.

“Captain – Captain Anderson! We’ve got two in here!”

Kaidan saw the man’s hands first as they grabbed onto a piece of stone, followed slowly by his arms and eventually his face. Captain Anderson was next to look through the opening, and he reached for Kaidan’s arm. Kaidan crawled forward slowly and let the soldier pull him through the small opening in the rubble through to the other side.

“Alenko, thank god.” Anderson put an arm around Kaidan’s back to support him. “Are you okay?”

Kaidan nodded, wincing – it hurt to stand upright, his sore muscles having contracted and settled from being in the cramped spot. “Nothing that won’t heal, sir.”

Anderson’s face was grim, and Kaidan knew what was coming next.

“And Shepard? Where is she?”

“I-I don’t know, sir. She…” Kaidan paused to take in a deep, rocky breath. “We were separated, when the reaper came down.”

“God damn it…” Anderson surveyed the destruction behind them, and Kaidan turned with him.

He hadn’t been prepared for the sight. All that was left of the Council Chambers was a fiery chaos of rubble and twisted metal, with plumes of smoke and gas rising at random points. He knew then that, by all rights, Shepard couldn’t have survived it all, not unless she’d been lucky enough to land in an air pocket as well. The realisation hit Kaidan like a slug to his stomach, all of his breath being knocked out of him. Hot tears stung behind his eyes and he screwed them shut before any could fall, letting his head slump forward as he did.

Garrus came to take Kaidan from Anderson, to free the Captain to move on with his soldiers. “Come on, Kaidan. We need to get to an infirmary.”

Kaidan planted his feet when Garrus tried to pull him forward, not ready to leave her just yet. He looked over his shoulder again, back at the wreckage they’d just climbed out of. It was exactly as it had been a few moments before — until a quick flash of red passed through two huge concrete slabs.

Garrus pulled on Kaidan again and Kaidan wrenched himself free, ignoring the sharp pain that shot up his arm. He turned around fully, eyes scanning the wreckage frantically. It had probably been nothing – just a piece of metal shifting in the heat. But maybe it hadn’t been.

And then he saw it again – another brief flash of red, and this time a little bit of white too. Whatever it was, it was advancing towards them, slowly.

Kaidan stumbled forward, clumsily navigating the ragged rubble under his feet. He strained to see another sign of movement.

He heard the crumble of stone just ahead and to the left, followed by a faint grunt.

“Selina,” he whispered, starting a hobbling run to where he’d heard the sound. He stumbled and said her name again, willing it to be her. He called over his shoulder to Garrus and Anderson who took off after him instantly, while the soldier assisting the Captain radioed for medical transport.

And then he saw her, as she climbed over a ridge. She was alive – bruised and bleeding, but alive.

He shouted her name and urged himself to run faster, giving himself over to the adrenaline coursing through him. She looked up and met his eyes, and a small smile crept over her face.

He reached her finally and cradled her face between his trembling hands.

“Hey, Kaidan,” she said weakly, still smiling and bringing a hand up to rest on Kaidan’s wrist – her other arm lay limp and misshapen at her side, obviously broken.

Kaidan pulled her to him as gently as possible and pressed a soft kiss to her swollen and bruised lips. He felt his fingers shudder against her cheeks, but he dared not tighten his grip on her to quiet them, afraid to damage her further.

“Lieutenant, you know Anderson’s behind you?” Shepard asked when he pulled away after a moment, her voice quiet but still playful.

Kaidan looked into her eyes, thankful to see their pale blue once again. He smiled at her and pulled her in again, resting his forehead against hers. “Yeah, I know.”

And he kissed her again, stronger and deeper, the adrenaline cooling in his blood, replaced by relief.


	10. Formal

“You clean up nicely.”

A jolt of arousal shot through Kaidan as Shepard purred in his ear. She was standing next to him at the head of the receiving line, just past the doors of the hotel banquet hall, and clearly she’d decided to take the brief pause in the otherwise-steady stream of Council dignitaries and Alliance brass to get him all bothered.

“I could say the same to you,” he whispered back gruffly, turning his head just so his breath ghosted over her ear. “But I have to say, I think I prefer you naked.”

He heard Shepard inhale sharply and he saw her throat work as she swallowed. Turnabout is fair play, after all.

Before she could volley back, Admiral Hackett approached with a pair of other Alliance officers in tow. Kaidan played along, greeting them as protocol demanded, but his mind was elsewhere. Somewhere in the vicinity of Shepard’s breasts, specifically.

***

An hour later, after the receiving line had finally ended, Kaidan sidled up next to Shepard at the bar. He didn’t say anything to her at first, preferring to lean on one elbow and subtly eye her up and down.

“So, Kaidan, how late do you figure this thing is supposed to go?”

Kaidan shrugged and turned to face the bar, ordering a Peruvian whiskey with one ice cube – he normally drank the stuff straight, but being an official function and all, a little dilution was necessary. “Why, Commander? There’s something else you’d rather be doing tonight?” he said out of the corner of his mouth, pretending to be overly interested in just how the bartender was pouring his drink.

Shepard huffed slightly and he could feel her inch a little closer. “I can think of a few things.”

Kaidan swirled the ice cube around the tumbler a few times before taking a sip. “Oh?”

“Mmm. But I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“Well,” he said, pushing away from the bar and turning to face her. She turned slightly, meeting his eyes. “You think about what you’d like me to do you first, and I’ll catch you later.” He took another sip from his glass and winked at her over the rim before he walked away.

He wasn’t usually one for such blatant flirting, at least not in public, but he hadn’t seen her for two days, after the Council and Alliance had gotten their claws into her, and all he could really think about was the last time they’d been together. They’d stayed in his hotel room for a full day, and it’d been something of a game for them: how many times could they have each other in a 24-hour period. He’d lost count after six.

***

Kaidan didn’t see Shepard again until sometime later, just before Anderson was to present her with an award for her leadership in the Battle of the Citadel, as it had been dubbed. It was only three weeks past, and the Citadel was in more or less the same state it had been in before they’d headed directly to Alliance HQ in Vancouver, but the Normandy and its crew was due to ship out again in a week, so the commendations had been fast-tracked.

When she was finally free, he moved to her before someone else could swoop in. “I meant to tell you earlier, Shepard,” he said, keeping his voice low. “The dress suits you.” And it did – it was still some sort of Alliance styling, navy blue with gold trim, but it hugged her curves in a way that the standard issue casuals never quite managed.

“Thanks, Alenko,” she replied, rather demurely.

He was about to tease her for her formal tone, until Anderson’s voice boomed just over his shoulder, calling Shepard over. He turned around and watched her walk away with Anderson. Then she stopped when she was a few feet ahead and excused herself. She retraced her steps, a small smirk playing at her lips.

“Kaidan, there was something that I meant to tell you as well.”

“What’s that?”

She leaned in towards him, and dropping her voice to a whisper, she said, “I’m not wearing anything under this thing.”

Kaidan felt himself harden instantly, and his throat went dry. He brought a fist to his mouth and cleared his throat, but kept the fist in place to prevent any inadvertent lip reading. “The minute you can get free, meet me upstairs.”

“Fine. But leave the dress blues on,” she said with a wink before turning to walk back to Anderson, and he concentrated on not staring at her ass as she went.

***

Once the last speeches had been given, Kaidan quietly snuck out of the banquet hall and made his way up to his room on the 38th floor. The room was dark when he entered, but he didn’t turn the lights on. The rest of downtown Vancouver sprawled out beyond the giant plate glass windows along the far side of the room, allowing in enough ambient light.

Instead of undressing as he would normally have done, he left his formals on per Shepard’s request and went to sit on the edge of the bed and looked out the window. The city outside was a maze of glass buildings that almost gave off their own light in the way that they reflected everything else around them, and the little red lights that helped in hover car wayfinding flashed on and off at random intervals.

Shepard wasn’t far behind, letting herself into the room shortly after he’d gotten there. He turned when he heard the door hiss open, and slowly walked towards her.

“Finally,” she said quietly, smiling at him.

“Finally,” he repeated, reaching for her hips.

Shepard didn’t waste any time. She claimed his mouth hungrily, and he responded in kind, whisking his tongue over hers. He moaned at the same time as she did, thrilling at finally having her alone after the long evening. His hands moved from her hips to her ass and he gripped her roughly. She responded eagerly, wrapping her arms around his neck as far as she could reach and drawing up onto her toes for leverage. She ground her hip into him, rubbing against his erection and he groaned from deep in his chest.

She leaned her head back slightly and moved her lips his ear, nipping at his earlobe and then kissing her way down his neck. “Those old Alliance guys sure love to talk,” she whispered between kisses. “I felt like I was never going to get you alone.”

Kaidan put a hand on Shepard’s shoulder and brushed the strap of her dress down her arm, covering the now-exposed skin with his mouth. He bit down, and she gasped, her finger nails digging into his arms through the fabric of his formals, and then he laved the bite with his tongue. She carded her fingers through his hair and pulled slightly, angling his mouth up to meet hers, and she kissed him forcefully.

Shepard pulled away a moment later, pushing him away with one hand in the centre of his chest. “Let’s get a proper look at you, Lieutenant. I need to make sure your suit meets Alliance standard.”

Kaidan chuckled and stood up straight, pulling at the hem of his jacket to straighten it.

Shepard took her hand back, not before letting it drag down his front and just barely above his cock. She watched to see his reaction, but he held the hiss in.

“Now, Lieutenant. Is that anyway to greet a superior officer?”

“Sorry, Commander.” He brought his right hand up in salute, and as he did, she put a hand on his opposite arm and walked behind him, drawing her hand up over his shoulder and along the back of his neck. He felt the skin prickle at her light touch and the little hairs there stood up on end.

She stopped directly behind him, both hands resting on his shoulder blades. “At ease, Alenko,” she whispered. The faint brush of her breath over his ear made his cock twitch and he clenched his right hand into a fist at his side as the sensation washed over him.

Shepard’s hands travelled down his back, and onto his hips, her fingers crawling forwards slowly. They stopped just under the vee of his pelvic muscle, and he resisted bucking his hips. She let her hands rest in that spot for just a moment, before she drew them back over his ass to knead at the rounded muscles.

“Satisfied, Commander?”

“Mmm… not quite yet.”

Kaidan turned around and swept Shepard up into his arms, moving towards the bed behind them. He set her down on the edge of it and kissed her, tugging on her lower lip with his teeth as he pulled away. “What’s it going to take?”

Shepard cupped him through his pants, squeezing slightly. He groaned and leaned his hips forward into her palm. “Permission to disrobe, Lieutenant,” she said playfully before pulling herself back further onto the bed.

Kaidan laughed, something quick and low, and started to remove his jacket. “Smooth.”

Shepard giggled slightly and leaned back against the pillows. “I thought it was pretty clever.”

She was watching him undress, her eyes following his hands as they worked at each piece of clothing. If she hadn’t just worked him into a slight frenzy with her ‘inspection,’ he might have taken his time, to torture her a little, but his pants were constricting enough as it was.

Eager though he was, he was still mindful of the dress blues, carefully laying them over the back of an armchair near the window. He moved along the side of the bed, and hooked his thumbs under the waistband of his boxer-briefs, pulling them off in one swift movement.

Shepard smiled up at him as he crawled over her. Her hand went straight for his cock, gripping him and stroking upwards, and he exhaled in a sharp huff, not expecting it.

“Your turn,” he said, pulling away from her touch and reaching around her back for the zip of her dress.

“I guess that’s fair,” she replied, shimmying her shoulders free from the straps. She leaned back into the pillows and angled her hips upwards to let him pull the garment off and away. “But, you don’t have to go fold mine or anything, Kaidan. The Alliance  _does_ have laundry services, you know.”

Kaidan tossed the dress onto the armchair, figuring it was a good compromise between where she would have left it on the floor and the careful fold he’d have given it. She hadn’t been lying – she’d been naked save for the dress, and his erection throbbed at the thought of how she’d navigated the party downstairs that way.

He leaned over her and took a nipple into his mouth, working the other with his thumb. She gasped and leaned up into him, taking him in hand and stroking him. He didn’t want to spend himself in her hand, at least not at this point, so he clutched her closer to him and rolled them over.

Shepard straddled him, bracing her hands against his stomach. She looked down at him as he savoured her form.

She ground her hips into him, and he moaned at her warmth. She mewled and dug her fingers into his chest and lifted herself slightly away from him. Kaidan looked at her face, eyes screwed shut and lips parted as she breathed raggedly. Arrant strands of her dark hair fell into her face, and he brushed them away. He wanted to savour these moments as long as he possibly could, but he knew he wouldn’t last long. He took her by the hip in one hand, and slowly guided his cock into her with the other, gently pushing her back down onto him.

They gasped at the same time, as he slid into her slick warmth and filled her. He kept a hand firmly on her hip and moved the other to knead and caress her breast. Shepard rocked her hips against him, slowly and purposefully, and as she worked him, he felt her tighten around him rhythmically. He took her by the hips with both hands, thrusting into her as she ground down onto him. She moved a hand between them and stroked herself, and his hand soon brushed hers away. He rubbed his thumb into her, and she fell forward, hands on either side of his head as she kissed him forcefully. She moaned into his mouth as he bucked harder against her, his ass rising off the bed fully. She pulled away from his mouth slightly, crying out his name as he brought her to her climax. He felt her shudder around him, and he groaned, long and low, and he thrust into her one last time as he came.

She collapsed onto him, boneless against his chest, her head lying beside his, cheek to cheek. He breathed heavily and pressed kisses into her shoulder, her skin slick with cool sweat.

Shepard rolled off of him and tucked herself into his side, running small circles into his chest with her fingertips. “We should rest up,” she whispered before kissing his cheek. “We’ve got a record to break.”


	11. Move

Kaidan remembered hearing Joker’s voice crackle over the comm. system –  _“brace for evasive manoeuvres!”_  – and feeling the instant surge of panic that coursed through him. He remembered the sound, as the hostile ship’s beam breached the Normandy’s hull, with less resistance than a hot knife through butter. He remembered the heat of it, and the heat of the fires that took root in its wake. He’d smelled burning plastic and scorched metal and the distinct scent of ozone as exposed wiring sparked and sizzled all around him.

He remembered tearing through the passages of the Normandy, nearly being knocked to the floor as the ship lurched. He’d run to the CIC first, looking for Shepard, and then he ran down all those flights of stairs to engineering when he couldn’t find her anywhere else. He remembered seeing her, standing at one of the comm. consoles, her fingers furiously typing out distress calls onto a glitching keypad. She’d said, her voice hiding the slightest quiver, that the Alliance would reach them in time. He didn’t believe it, and he knew she didn’t either; it was just one of those things you were meant to say in a moment like that.

He remembered trying to pull her away from the console, to get them to the evac. shuttles. He knew she wouldn’t bend to him, but he had to try so he did it anyway, futility be damned. She’d wrenched her arm away and said she was going to get Joker, and then she ordered him to get the rest of the crew off the ship. He was running on adrenaline, but it all felt so personal, so individual –  _he_ had to get  _her_ off the ship – but in that moment she wasn’t his lover, she was his Commander, and despite everything that they were to each other, there was no changing that.

She’d pulled him close then, and she whispered his name, begging him to  _just move_. He’d sighed, entirely defeated, and then he kissed her for the briefest moment, before she disappeared up a maintenance shaft.

He’d replayed those moments over in his mind’s eye a hundred times or more, but the gnawing anxiety never waned. He was slowly unravelling, barely able to eat and definitely unable to sleep. He couldn’t even say it was the not-knowing, as though knowing would suddenly relieve him. He already  _knew_.

Anderson had found Kaidan then, far away and slumped in a chair in the newly-appointed Councillor’s makeshift office, his head propped up by a fist. Anderson put a gentle hand to Kaidan’s shoulder, jolting him up from the depths of his memories. Kaidan pulled himself up in the chair and ran a hand down his face. Anderson sat on the other side of his desk, across from Kaidan, and leaned forward, resting his elbows on the wood and clasping his hands together.

Anderson studied him for a moment and his eyebrows knit together. Kaidan started to grow uneasy under the scrutiny, so he pretended to clear his throat.

Anderson nodded slightly, taking Kaidan’s cue to get down to it. “Lieutenant, there’s been a… development. In the case of Commander Shepard.”

 _‘In the_ case  _of Commander Shepard_ ’… Kaidan didn’t respond.

“We’ve had search patrols combing through the Terminus System, tracing back to the Normandy’s last known coordinates and outwards, tenfold.” Anderson paused and heaved a deep sigh, dropping his eyes to look at his hands as they fidgeted on top of his desk. “There’s… there’s been no indication…”

Kaidan already knew what Anderson was trying to tell him – he’d known since the moment the door of his evac. shuttle had closed behind him, with her on the wrong side of it. But that he was prepared for what was coming next didn’t make him any less numb to the dull ache that sat deep in his chest. He shifted in the chair and turned his head to look out the window at his left.

“The Alliance has to make a declaration, Lieutenant. The casualty will be classified as ‘killed in action.’ The service will be on Arcturus, next week …”

Anderson’s voice was drowned out by a low drone in Kaidan’s head, and he felt a searing pain begin at his temples before it bloomed behind his eyes.  _‘Killed’_  in action… not  _‘missing_ ’. When Anderson said ‘service,’ he meant a full funeral, and Kaidan reeled at the thought of just what exactly the Alliance would do, without a body. It wasn’t right – Shepard deserved more than  _that_. Yet again, he was powerless to help her, to save her, but this time, futility could not be damned.


	12. Haze

Kaidan bore a lot of guilt after the destruction of the Normandy and the loss of Shepard, for not doing more, for not dragging her and Joker off the ship himself, and for surviving.

After the dust had started to settle, he’d taken a posting on Arcturus, manning a desk, authorising personnel requests and attempting to stay on top of all the resultant paperwork. It took six months, but eventually the guilt morphed into a deep depression that very nearly swallowed him whole. He took a leave of absence, hoping that some time spent alone might help.

It didn’t.

He lasted a week, before he crawled into the deep end of a large bottle of scotch, and then he spent the next five weeks in and out of a peaty, musky haze.

When his leave period was over, Kaidan missed his first day back in service – and he should have received a Failure to Report citation, but his CO was a patient and understanding man, who almost knocked down the door to Kaidan’s apartment and nearly dragged him off to the transport depot. Kaidan had gone willingly, but not without being scared a little bit shitless first.

After arriving back on Arcturus, he’d been disgruntled and ornery for the first two weeks, grinding out his ‘ayes’ and ‘sirs’ and ‘ma’ams’ through clenched teeth, but when he finally took the time to be honest with himself, he had actually been thankful that at least someone had made themselves an anchor for him, of some sort.

After some time, Kaidan had made a few friendly acquaintances. He’d never really had very many friends at one time, always moving around as he did, and BAat certainly hadn’t been any easier. Serving on the ships meant that any friends he did make sometimes never made it back from missions. But serving at a desk, set firmly upon the ground, lent him a new sense of consistency. He hadn’t been one for socialising much over the last eleven months, but he joined in on his team’s poker nights occasionally; he’d win even less often, but it was still something, and certainly better than spending the night alone in his darkened apartment with his omni-tool, flicking through pictures of Shepard and everything from before.

On one poker night, they’d bet him that if he lost the next hand, instead of paying out his credits, he’d have to go on a date – and one where he left the omni-tool at home. He wasn’t sure why he agreed to it at first – he’d figured that maybe the sizable Battarian cigar had gotten to his head – but he also wondered if maybe he knew that they’d been right. Kaidan drew a jack of hearts and a three of spades on that hand, and a couple of nights later, he was at the Embassy Lounge with Melissa.

She was a nice girl – a doctor at Huerta Memorial, specialising in volus respiration. She was intelligent and pretty and actually kind of funny – but she wasn’t Shepard. And even though he knew he’d have to eventually accept that  _no one_  ever would be, he wasn’t ready for that just yet, and when he was, he knew he’d need someone who’d gone beyond Citadel Space in their lives.

And now, as he waited for Earth transport, he realised that it had been a year since that one afternoon in Anderson’s office, when he’d felt suffocated and alone. A year wasn’t a long time, really, but it was something. And if he could make it to a year, he could make it to two, and probably even beyond.


	13. Summer

“I thought you were still Alliance.”

Kaidan set down his duffel just inside the front door and looked up at his dad. “I am, Dad. Nothing’s changed.”

Dad gave him a once-over and then cocked an eyebrow. “Oh. I’m just surprised that they’re  _still_ letting you serve with all that hair.”

He knew Dad was joking, despite the stern face – the old man was always good at playing serious, but he’d never quite mastered how to hide the twinkle in his eye. But Kaidan put a hand to his hair subconsciously all the same.

“Oh, leave the boy alone,” said Mom as she padded down the short hallway of the condo, wiping her hands on a tea towel. “Hi, love,” she added, leaning in to kiss Kaidan’s cheek.

“All I’m saying is that we always had strict regs on that sort of thing, in my day. Any longer than a half-inch and you got doused with engine oil.”

Kaidan chuckled. “Things are a little different now, Dad.”

“Just ignore your father,” Mom said flatly, taking Kaidan by the arm and leading him into the condo. “He’s just jealous because he hasn’t got any hair left to grow past a half-inch even if he wanted to.”

Dad laughed as he opened the fridge. “Beer, son?”

“Yeah, that’d be great, Dad.”

“How have you been, Kai?” Mom said, turning to face him, running a thumb over his cheek.

“Been good, Mom. Just busy.”

Mom’s eyebrows knit together slightly. “Is that why you haven’t been here in so long?”

“Give him a break; he’s a desk jockey now – that shit consumes your life.”

Kaidan took the beer from Dad and they clinked the necks of their bottles together. Dad wasn’t entirely wrong – Kaidan had found that time went by a lot quicker when every day was routine – but there was a lot more to it than just that. Now wasn’t the time to get into it all, though, not when Mom looked so concerned.

Kaidan leaned down and kissed her on the forehead, right over the knot in her brow. “Sorry, Mom. I won’t leave it so long next time.”

Mom smiled up at him warmly and patted his cheek. “I had better get that in writing,” she said as she walked to the kitchen.

Kaidan turned around and saw that Dad had moved onto the large balcony. He followed, and leaned on the railing next to him.

“It’s good to have you here, son. I know it’s been a difficult time. After the Normandy.”

Kaidan took a sip of his beer and nodded, looking out at the Pacific as it merged with the late summer sunset. “Yeah, it’s been… Well, yeah. It’s been tough.”

He hadn’t told his parents about Shepard. When he was still serving on the Normandy, there hadn’t been time. And then, after Shepard died, it had been too hard. He’d tried, once, over vidphone six months after the attack, but he’d broken down before he’d even said her name. Mom had practically started packing a bag for Arcturus right then, and he knew that when he did eventually tell them, it would have to be in person.

***

Kaidan had lived a lot of places in his life, as a military brat and as an officer, but the place that felt like the closest approximation to ‘home’ was Vancouver. It was probably because it was the only place his parents had ever really put down any roots, so there was a consistency to it.

Whenever he’d visit, he’d walk into the same condo, stand on the same balcony, and look at the same view of English Bay. He’d wake up in the same guest bedroom each morning, and emerge to the smell of the same brand of coffee already brewed, with Mom ready to put together breakfast for the three of them. Dad always wore the same robe and read the day’s news in the same order: Alliance news briefs, Earth politics, Terminus System current affairs, interplanetary sports, and obituaries, but never the editorials –  _‘why should I care about what those narrow-minded stylus-wielders have to say about_ anything _?’_  he would always say as he pointedly flicked past the section on the datapad.

After breakfast, they’d go out and do the same things – hiking up Grouse Mountain, day trips to Whistler, or sometimes just relaxing on the beach near the condo. If Kaidan was around for long enough, they’d spend a few days up at the cabin on the Sunshine Coast, which was always Kaidan’s favourite because it was so unlike his day-to-day with the Alliance – quiet, isolated, and not a single space port within less than two days’ travel.

***

 “You going to be at a desk for the rest of your career, son?” Dad said, as he brought the grill to life.

“I don’t know, Dad. It’s just what I’m doing now.” Kaidan shrugged a little, hoping to dismiss the topic, and handed the tray of food to Dad.

“Is it really what you want to be doing, though?”

Kaidan watched as Dad tested the heat of the grill, trying to think of the best way to answer. Of course he didn’t  _want_  to be at a desk forever, but the alternative – serving on a ship again – still felt wrong.

“It’s not that bad,” he answered finally.

Dad focused on the steaks for a while, pausing intermittently to sip his beer. “That’s not what I asked you, though.”

Kaidan let out a deep sigh. “No. I know.”

“Right. So there’s your answer.” When Kaidan didn’t answer, Dad lowered the lid of the grill and moved to sit next to him. “It’s your last night here, Kaidan - indulge me. I know it’s tough, getting back on a ship after something like this.”

Kaidan nodded, and started picking at the label of his bottle. “I’m not scared of another attack.”

“Did I say you were? Look, son – don’t forget that I’ve lived that life before. We never had it as bad as the Normandy, but we had our share of bumps and scrapes. And there were always losses.”

Mom came out onto the balcony then, glass of rosé in hand. She perched on the arm of Kaidan’s deck chair and draped her arm around his shoulders. She smiled warmly at him when he looked back at her.

“You lost your CO. That’s always the roughest –”

“She was more than just my CO,” Kaidan blurted out involuntarily, interrupting Dad. He regretted it almost instantly – he’d wanted to bring this up some other way.

He saw Mom and Dad exchange a quick glance.

“Who was she, love?” Mom said softly, squeezing Kaidan’s shoulder.

Kaidan sighed. “She was… She was something else.” He shot a sideways glance at Dad, wondering how he would react. He had always an open-minded man, but he’d also been moulded by the Alliance navy, and regs were regs were regs.

Dad got up and went back to the grill. “We’ve all heard the official stories, son. Shepard sounded like she was a hell of a soldier.”

Kaidan swallowed past the lump in his throat. “Yeah, Dad, she was. She was efficient, and smart. But she was compassionate too – she helped release a rachni queen that was being used for experiments, back on Noveria.”

Dad turned around from the grill with a raised eyebrow. “Are you sure she wasn’t also crazy?”

Mom gasped and threw a balled-up napkin at Dad.

Kaidan chuckled and patted Mom on the knee. “It’s okay – we all thought the same thing at the time. But Shepard had a whole conversation with that thing, and it actually seemed like the right decision at the end of the day.”

“What was her name?” Mom asked, moving into the chair next to Kaidan.

“Selina.”

“That’s pretty.”

Kaidan nodded and took a sip of his beer, noticing that the lump in his throat had gone away. “I would’ve brought her here, you know.”

Mom smiled, her eyes a little glassy. She looked out over the view and smiled again. “That would’ve been so nice, Kai.”

A couple years back, he’d made Mom come to terms with the fact that it would be a long time before there’d be any possible grandchildren for her to spoil, but he’d also never brought a girl home, or even mentioned bringing one home, and he figured that even the missed possibility, however slim, was hard for her.

Thankfully Dad always had a good sense of timing. “What would Shepard say about you riding a desk, son?”

That was, actually, not something Kaidan had ever considered. He’d taken the desk job out of pure necessity, really. But as he thought about it now, he knew exactly how Shepard would react.

“Probably nothing good,” Kaidan answered eventually.

Dad nodded and brought the platter of food over to the deck table. “I’d hope so.”

“Give it a rest, honey – if Kaidan wants to keep the desk job, he’s perfectly fine to,” Mom said, as she started dishing out food onto their plates.

“I don’t want to,” Kaidan muttered. “Not really.”

Dad laughed and winked at Kaidan. “Of course you don’t! You miss the ships – how could you not? You weren’t raised for a desk job, son. I made _sure_  of that.”

Kaidan laughed and cut off a bite of steak. “Fine, Dad. You win. I’ll see about putting in a call.”

Mom scoffed and put a hand on Kaidan’s forearm. “Just make sure that the entire Systems Alliance knows that it was his idea. Or else we’ll never hear the end of it.”


	14. Thousand

Selina had a thousand questions, at least. First of all: how the hell was she alive, really? Miranda had explained it, yes, but it felt more like half-truths and carefully glossed over details. As she figured it, Cerberus had basically rebuilt her from little more than ashes – exactly  _how_ cybernetic was she? Just how much of her own mind was really  _her_? She’d encountered one other cybernetic, fairly recently, and he’d been an indoctrinated turian under the thrall of the reapers. That couldn’t happen to her too, could it? Because, if it could, she thought maybe she’d rather ask Cerberus to get their credits back and leave her spaced.

She couldn’t deny that she was thankful for the second chance, though. Even if it did come with a lot of strings attached, to Cerberus. It was hard to reconcile the fact that the same organisation – black ops, paramilitary, terrorist,  _whatever_ they really were – that she’d encountered two and a half years ago would also bother to expend so many resources bringing her back from the dead. She felt a little dirty about it all, honestly, but she  _was_ alive. Morality aside, it was hard to argue with that.

And how did Cerberus manage to find her before the Alliance did, anyway? She had to imagine – had to  _hope_ – that the Alliance would have had search parties out to the Normandy’s last coordinates almost right away. Cerberus would have had to have been close, to get to her first. It was unnerving to think about, but she tried to put any thoughts of their possible involvement out of her mind. She’d never know for sure. All that she knew now was that she was alive, one way or another.

At least there was comfort in some of the familiar faces on the Normandy – Joker and Chakwas especially. It helped her feel better for accepting Cerberus’ help and credits – if they were willing to cross lines to work with them, then it couldn’t be all bad. Still, she wondered about some of the others. She missed Garrus – he would have known exactly how to put everything into perspective for her, and she figured he’d have had a few choice words about The Illusive Man, too.

And Kaidan. She’d tried not to let her thoughts dwell on him much; it hurt. She mourned the loss of him, and that was even with her knowing that he was alive. He only knew what the Alliance had classified her as – killed in action. So he thought she was dead. Maybe he’d mourned her, and moved on? She wanted to contact him, more than anything else, but she knew she couldn’t. How could she possibly explain everything in a message? She wasn’t nearly eloquent enough for that.  _“Hey Kaidan – remember how everyone thought I’d been spaced? Well I was, but nothing that a little cybernetics and a lot of credits couldn’t fix.”_  She ached for him, but she couldn’t do that to him; she couldn’t be that selfish. She’d just have to focus on her own mission, and hope their paths would cross, somewhere.


	15. Denial

_Shepard_

_I’m sorry for what I said back on Horizon. I spent two years pulling myself back together after you went down with the_ _Normandy_   _. It took me a long time to get over my guilt for surviving and move on. It was hard – really hard. And maybe I’m not as over it as I thought._

_Then I saw you and everything pulled hard to port. You were standing in front of me, looking exactly like I’d remembered you – save for a few nasty scars – and it was unsettling. There were a lot of other things I want to say, to ask, to do. But you were with Cerberus. I guess I really don’t know who either of us is anymore. That night before Ilos… well, it seems like a lifetime ago. And I guess, for you, it was. I wonder if you even remember that now… how much of you is still there?_

_For a moment, I wanted to come back with you to the_ _Normandy_   _. But I’m still_ _Alliance_   _and always will be. I can’t forget what we saw Cerberus do with our own eyes. Maybe you lost your memory of that too… I don’t know. I almost hope that was the case – this would make a lot more sense, then._

 _But please be careful. I’ve watched too many people close to me die – on_ _Eden_   _Prime, on Virmire, on Horizon, on the_ _Normandy_   _. I couldn’t bear it if I lost you again. I still love you, Shepard. I always will. I know at least that much. It was really hard for me to walk away from you down there. I’m still not sure I did the right thing. Maybe you’ve seen more to Cerberus than what I know of them. But my gut tells me otherwise, so I had to walk away. They’re too dangerous to be trusted._

_When things settle down a little… maybe… we can take a little time. To get to know each other again. I don’t know. Just take care._

_Yours_   _  
Kaidan_

 

Kaidan had written Shepard two letters after their encounter on Horizon, but he only sent one of them. After he’d finished typing out the first letter, he leaned back in his chair and read it again, and then again.

He could’ve denied everything he knew – all of the classified Alliance intel that he’d seen – and ignored his instincts, and just followed Shepard back to the ship. He could have forgotten everything for a little while, getting lost in her and having her over and over, while the ship escorted him back to the Citadel. But then, he thought, how could he be so sure that she even remembered that part of him, of them? How much of  _her_ was really left? Yeah, she’d spoken to him with that familiarity, but how much trust could he put in that? He felt like he had no idea who she really was anymore. Denial wouldn’t get him anywhere.

Though, she really did look so much the same – just like the woman he’d fallen in love with so quickly;  _his_  Selina. But when he got to the grit of it, the morality of it, she was still with Cerberus. And yeah, maybe she didn’t remember what they’d witnessed – the husks and the rachni and Kahoku. Maybe they’d scanned and scrubbed her memories. He couldn’t really know for sure; he didn’t know whether he could trust what she’d said back on Horizon. But he remembered everything. And he couldn’t –  _wouldn’t_ – ever forget. Whether she was a willing part or just a pawn in Cerberus’ plans didn’t really matter. There were just some things that could never be overlooked, never swept under the rug like some dirty secret, not even for Shepard.

After he’d sat and stared at the console for so long that his eyes started to itch and burn and tear, he took in a deep, shaky breath, and wrote Shepard a second letter. It was something else all together, and maybe a little rambling, but it was what needed to be said, and so he sent that one instead.


	16. Mad

Selina wanted to be mad. She wanted to be livid.

It would have been so much easier, if she could just morph her feelings towards Kaidan into anger. Instead, she was left with a lump in her throat and an ache somewhere deep in her chest. His message after Horizon had hurt. She knew he wouldn’t have meant for it to, but it did all the same. He’d had more time to distance himself, to process a life without her – without  _them_.

But that life was still new to her. She was still getting used to not having him over her shoulder in the field, to not having him on the bridge of the Normandy, and to not having him next to her when she finally took the time to sleep.

Two years was a long time, she knew, and she couldn’t fault him for moving on. It had been two years for her too, technically, but her cognisance was still a new phenomenon, and all of her wounds felt fresh and not yet healed.

For a moment, after she’d read his message for the third time, she cursed him for not holding out some kind of hope and waiting for her. But she knew she couldn’t expect that of him; it was unrealistic and unfair, and she loved him too much to really want him to carry that burden.

Had their fates been reversed, and she went through two years of hell believing that he’d been killed so suddenly, she knew she’d probably have done the same. They were both pragmatists – they didn’t get to where they were in their careers by being anything but. Sometimes that pragmatism hurt, but it needed always to prevail, because things needed to get done. People relied on them to be able to compartmentalise and square away their emotions.

And she knew she had to attempt to do just that.

She looked over the response that she’d started to write back to Kaidan. It was long and rambling, and honestly, full of the same justifications for her new allegiance that she’d been repeating to herself since she’d regained consciousness. He didn’t need her reasons or her excuses; she knew that. He simply needed her understanding.

She wiped the response from the screen and closed the terminal, ignoring the digital likeness of him that stared at her from the frame to her right. His eyes smouldered in that photo, and she was too weak to bear the way that they always made her feel when she looked into them. She heaved a deep sigh and shuffled to her bed, collapsing onto it and forcing herself to start to learn how to sleep without his solid warmth pressed against her back.


	17. Wind

Selina watched the steam as it rose lazily from the mug clasped in her hands on the table, as the pads of her fingers grew warmer and warmer as the hot liquid permeated the sides of the mug. It was some sort of Asari herbal blend from Liara, meant to help with insomnia, but she hadn’t made the tea to drink it, really. It was more of a ritual for her, something grounding. She’d done it for years, for so long and so often that she couldn’t remember when it’d started. She would sit with a steaming mug, holding it until her fingertips felt the burn of the liquid. Then she’d pull her hands away, and wiggle her fingers a little until they cooled. She’d repeat the pattern, as the pads of her fingers got progressively more sensitive with each repetition. She didn’t quite understand the point of it, still, but she always got her best thinking done that way, so it became a regular habit. Especially whenever she felt a little lost, which was more and more often, lately.

Garrus walked into the mess then, and she heard his sauntering lope before she saw him.

“Shepard. You look about ready to have words with that mug.”

Selina smiled up at him and watched as he sat across form her, his long fingers clasping together on the table. “No one’s ever insubordinate with me, Garrus. I have to vent on something.”

“Don’t take it out on helpless ceramic, Shepard. I’ll be insubordinate for you. Watch: Shepard, I don’t like the way you captain this ship. I think you should relieve your duties to me. Or Mordin, I guess.”

Selina laughed. “Thanks, Vakarian. Always there when I need you.”

Garrus smirked and gave a slight nod. “Jokes aside, Shepard, you looked a little far away when I came in.”

She lifted the mug and took a small sip of tea. “Just thinking.”

“About?”

“Something Thane said, earlier.”

“So he’s somehow managed to swagger his way into your thoughts,” he said, leaning back in his chair and hooking an elbow over the back of it. “Gotta say, Shepard, I’m a little hurt that you didn’t think of me first.”

“Garrus, you know you’ll always be my favourite non-human,” she said with a lopsided smile.

“Good. Now, what did Thane say?”

Shepard thought for a moment, chewing the inside of her cheek. “He told me about a memory, from a long time ago. He actually sort of… relived it, in front of me.”

Garrus cocked an eyebrow. “Not sure I like where this is going. What do you mean, he ‘relived’ it?”

Selina shook her head and pulled her hands away from the mug, wiggling her fingers. “He didn’t’ do anything; it’s just the way he remembers things. He said that drells have this near-perfect memory. It was like he was re-watching it, like a vid.”

“Huh. They remember everything that way?”

“Apparently. Good and bad.”

Garrus leaned forward, clasping his hands on the table again. “And why were you thinking about that, exactly?”

Selina shrugged, taking another sip of tea. “I kind of wonder what that’d be like, sort of.”

“So you mean that they remember every detail of every memory? Whether it’s a good or bad one?”

“More or less.”

Garrus’ lip lifted in a sort of sneer. “No, thank you. Rather not remember quite a few details of my life to this point. Some things are better left forgotten.” He looked at Selina as she stared into her mug, her mouth drawn tight. “Don’t torture yourself, Shepard. I know what you’re thinking. You’re not as enigmatic as you think you are.”

Selina smirked and looked up at him. “You know me too well.”

“Well someone around here has to. Look, Shepard, you’re bigger than this, moping over Alenko –” He held up a finger when she started to protest. “Yes, you  _are_  moping. You’re going to save the galaxy someday soon, and if he wanted to be a part of it with you, he could have been – it’s his loss.”

“Yeah,” she replied, exhaling. “You’re right.” It was a lie; she knew it wasn’t as simple as that, but it was simpler to just let it be.

“I know I am.”

“You’re also very cocky…”

“I know that too,” he said, standing. “And both are well-earned.”

Selina laughed, something that bubbled up sort of unexpectedly. “Well at least you’re humble about it.”

“Don’t tell anyone that. I’ve got an image to maintain.” He moved to the far end of the mess, near the walkway towards the gun battery. “Have a good night, Commander.”

Once she was alone again, Selina’s thoughts went back to the way Thane had relived his memory. He’d looked off into the middle distance, his eyes focusing on some invisible point, and he’d started speaking in fragmented sentences.  _“Laser dot trembles on the skull. Spice on the spring wind. Sunset eyes, defiant in the scope.”_ It’d seemed so vivid, even to her as an observer.

She wondered what it would be like for her to relive a memory that way.  _Dark curls, fallen forward and loose. A shuddered breath ghosting over her shoulder. Squared fingertips grasping, pressing into skin_. Her stomach did a little flip as the image of Kaidan, draped over her, thrusting and moaning, came to mind. She smirked a little as she swirled the cooling tea idly around the mug. Maybe it really did work.

Truthfully, Selina had been thinking about Thane’s ways for a while. From the moment they’d met, after tailing him through that building on Ilium, she’d been fascinated by him. His mannerisms, his way of speaking, his principles were all completely not what she’d been expecting from an assassin of his calibre. He was swift but gentle, and he’d prayed immediately afterwards – albeit for himself, but it was still more than she’d seen any of her other, current companions do after taking a life. She’d spent a fair amount of time speaking with him since he’d joined her crew. She’d never met a drell before, and she was genuinely curious.

And he felt like someone she could confide in, but more so than any of the others on the Normandy. He hadn’t known her before she’d been spaced, so there was no expected pretence of how she  _used_ to be, unlike with Garrus or Liara or Tali. And he had no vested interest in her methods in going about her current mission, unlike Miranda or Jacob. She could simply talk, or more often, ramble, and just  _be_ , and he accepted it for what it was.

But there was more to it than that. It was a physical attraction, of a kind – thought not on a sexual level. There was a certain quality to him that she couldn’t turn away from. It reminded her of the one time she’d been to a zoo, back in London, when she’d sat and watched the lone tiger lope about his enclosure. Controlled, calculated movements that all seemed to evince some sort of purpose, even though he was just walking from one end of the space to the other.

She’d never been a spiritual person; she’d had no use for any kind of divine compass or intervention. Her life had been a series of hard realities and cold truths, and a belief in the incorporeal had had no place in it. But, the way that Thane spoke of his religion appealed to her. The idea of a person being the whole of two parts, the soul and the body, both operating independently of each other but ultimately for the same entity. Maybe she was interpreting the concept the wrong way, subconsciously warping it to suit her own needs, but it helped her to understand why she still felt so broken, despite her body being in better condition than it’d been before she’d died. Cerberus had been able to repair her, physically, but her soul was still battered and bruised.

Thane had taken to calling her ‘siha,’ and it had taken some time before he finally explained the meaning behind it.  _One of the warrior-angels of the goddess Arashu; fierce in wrath and a tenacious protector_. She’d felt honoured, knowing that he’d only held his late wife in the same regard. She’d stupidly bumbled her way through an explanation of why she wasn’t exactly ‘available,’ at least not emotionally, but he’d simply given her a small smile and laid a hand over hers and said that he already knew, and that it had no bearing on his respect for her.

When her tea was finally chilled completely, Selina rose from the table and emptied her mug in the sink. She walked out of the mess and was about to call the elevator to her cabin when she stopped and looked over her shoulder, at the life support doors. It was late; the rest of the ship was certainly asleep by now. She knew that if she went to her cabin alone, she’d only sit awake and get deep inside her own head for however long.

She turned and moved towards the life support door, waiting for it to hiss open. She stuck her head inside, clearing her throat lightly to announce her presence in case the doors hadn’t already. She saw him, bent forward over the small table that overlooked the drive core, as he usually was. “You’re awake?”

“As much as you are.”

“Want some company?” she asked, stepping past the threshold of the door.

“Of course, siha. Come, sit.”


	18. Winter

Living life as Kaidan did, jumping from planet to planet, there were no seasons. Winter only came when you spent any time on a place like Noveria, and it was summer every single day on the Citadel. It was easy to not pay attention to time passing, month to month.

So when Anderson told him that he’d heard rumour that Shepard was less than a day away from the Omega 4 Relay, what stuck with Kaidan the most was how long it’d been since he’d seen Shepard on Horizon. After speaking with Anderson, Kaidan went straight back to his apartment. He wasn’t meant to know what exactly Shepard was doing in that part of the Terminus Systems. But Anderson had told him, and he was thankful for it. He was sure Anderson knew what he’d likely do with the information, and he also suspected that that was the reason for telling him.

He wanted to message her, or call her, but he knew he shouldn’t. He was sure that she wasn’t exactly favourable to him now; he knew he could be pretty sure of that. But what if she couldn’t pull it off and her ship just became another that didn’t make it back from the relay? He’d rather risk having her yell at him over the vidphone, then to never talk to her again at all. He had a modest list of regrets in his life, but he didn’t want that to be the latest addition.

He went to his vidphone and sat down. He straightened his shirt and ran a careful hand over his hair. He input the last code he’d reached her on, hoping that it was still valid. Or that she’d even be there to answer. Maybe he would be too late, and they’d already have made the passage.

The line buzzed over and over, waiting for the other end to be picked up. Kaidan couldn’t remember how many times it was supposed to go before the call failed, but he figured it had to be close.

Then finally the screen crackled to life, and there she was.

“Alenko.” She said it as a statement, not really a greeting.

His breath caught in his throat – she looked a little worn, her face drawn in the dim light of what he figured must be her cabin. But she was still striking as ever, and his brain sort of stalled as he looked at her.

“H-hey, Shepard,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. He felt awkward, like he was intruding.

She didn’t say anything. She was sitting up straight, her arms crossed tightly under her breasts. She was dressed in casuals, and her hair was down, falling in loose waves around her shoulders in that way that he’d always loved. He’d always been powerless to not run his hand through the ends of it, before, and his fingers twitched involuntarily as if they wanted to reach through the screen. He let out a little breath, feeling a bit relieved that he’d obviously caught her at least a few hours out from the relay.

“Sorry, I know I probably shouldn’t have… Anderson told me…” He let his voice trail off, not sure exactly what he should say.

She was still, and quiet, for a moment longer, and then she ran a hand through her hair, giving a little sigh. “It’s okay, Kaidan. I’m… glad you called.”

Kaidan thrilled a little to hear her say his name again, after so long, and with a degree of familiarity. He smiled, and she returned it almost right away.

“So, you’re actually doing this, huh?”

“Yeah.” She looked at him for a second and then shrugged. “Should be interesting.”

Kaidan chuckled and shook his head. He leaned forward, crossing his arms and resting his elbows on the edge of the desk. “I’m actually a little surprised that you didn’t say ‘fun.’”

Shepard gave him a lopsided smile. “Yeah, that too.”

It felt easy, like it’d used to. If she hated him, she wasn’t showing it. She looked relaxed, and even a little bit happy.

“You’ve got a good crew?”

“One of the best,” she answered, without hesitating.

He wanted to tell her that he wanted to be there with her, to be a part of it. But there was no point in that; he’d had that opportunity, even if it was a false one.

“And you feel ready?”

“I guess so. I don’t really know how one prepares for this… my last death kind of snuck up on me.”

He winced, to hear her joking about it. It didn’t  _surprise_ him, really – it was exactly her sense of humour. But he didn’t like being reminded of what happened to her.

“Selina… just, be careful.”

She gave him a look then, almost a little taken aback. And then her face softened into a small smile. “I haven’t heard anyone use my first name in… nearly three years. I almost forgot what it was.”

Kaidan smiled back, out of instinct, but it faded when he realised that she had to have meant him. “I’m sorry…” he said, his voice almost a whisper.

“What for?”

“I don’t know. For everything, I guess. I just wish this could all have gone differently.”

“You don’t need to apologise, Kaidan; a lot of this was out of our control. Look,” she said, pausing and leaning in closer, “I can’t really say a whole lot, but you were right, about…” and then she mouthed the world ‘Cerberus.’

Kaidan should have felt something more like relief, to hear that she didn’t hold a grudge for him, but all he felt was panic. Now she was concerned about Cerberus tapping her communications? And she was about to pass through the O4 at their hands?

“Don’t tell me that, Shepard…” he groaned. “Not when I’m all the way out here.”

“I’ll be fine. My crew is mine, not anyone else’s. I’m not alone out here.”

Kaidan heaved out a sigh. “No, I guess not. And you’d probably be just as fine even if you  _were_ alone.”

Shepard looked to her right, distracted by something that Kaidan couldn’t see. A moment passed, and then she nodded and turned back to the screen. “I’ve gotta go, Kaidan. We’re close.”

Kaidan nodded slowly. “Yeah, okay.” He took a deep breath, not sure what to say next. He wanted to say that he loved her, still, but it didn’t feel right. There was too much distance, too much time between them. He held her eyes for a moment. “Call me, when you can.”  _As soon as you can_.

Shepard finished tying back her hair in a knot. “I will. Thanks for calling, Kaidan. It was… good, to see you again.”

“You too, Shepard. Definitely.”

“Bye,” she said quietly, before leaning forward and killing the line.

When his screen went blank, Kaidan leaned back in his chair and looked out the window to his left. For all the things he’d left unsaid, he felt better for having called her. Maybe it didn’t matter exactly  _what_  was said; maybe all that mattered was that they’d spoken, for at least a few minutes. Maybe that would be enough to convince fate to give her a break this time


	19. Silver

The way Kaidan saw it, the thing that had always been a constant between him and Shepard was time. It was at the point now where he could say that for as long as they’d known each other, they’d spent more time apart than together. Two years, when she was dead or pretty close to it; eight months when she’d come back to life but he wasn’t in it; and six months where she was held in Alliance detention. And the only thing that all that time had seemed to foster was distance.

Their last conversation, over vidphone when neither of them was sure she’d survive to the next day, had been easy and comfortable and  _good_. But the first time he saw her in person again, it felt different. Awkward, and stiff. Maybe because the admiral and Shepard’s hulking bodyguard had been there. Or maybe Kaidan was just too far inside his own head, after hearing himself say that he ‘used to’ know Shepard, when Vega had asked him about her. He didn’t want to have once known her; he wanted to know her now, and for a long time still. But a lot had changed, and that’s just how it was.

Only, none of that mattered now – none of the time, or the awkwardness, or the unsaid words; not when his city was burning, suffocating in the stifling heat of the Reapers’ beams. He was on the Normandy again, even if technically he hadn’t yet made it past the shuttle bay; Vega was next to him, and their chests heaved as their breath stuttered from exertion as they watched Alliance HQ crumble.

Kaidan’s eyes scanned the mayhem of fires and smoke until he spotted Shepard and Anderson scrambling to the high point of a piece of jagged concrete jutting out from Coal Harbour. Joker guided the Normandy down to meet them and Kaidan couldn’t help but notice the grace of it, but only for a moment, because Shepard was running full bore up the near-impossible angle of the concrete. He reached for her when she jumped; she made it on-board without him, but he held onto her arm for a moment anyway, to steady her or maybe to steady himself.

And then Anderson held back, and a flash of silver glinted in the sun when he winged something towards Shepard. It took Kaidan a half-second to realise what it’d been, and then he turned to see Shepard with her dog tags back around her neck – they shouldn’t have ever been taken away in the first place, as far as he was concerned, but at least they were back where they belonged around her neck, and she was back where she belonged on her ship.

The Normandy rumbled as Joker began to pull away from the fiery Vancouver waterfront, and they watched through the open shuttle doors as Alliance soldiers scrambled to get themselves and a few straggling survivors into evac. shuttles. A Reaper’s beam shot forth, decimating two of the shuttles almost instantly. Shepard made a strangled sort of noise – not a sob, but more than just a gasp – and she turned to him. He put his arm around her shoulders and drew her in, mostly out of instinct. She turned her face into him, and they stayed that way until the shuttle doors closed and there was nothing else they could do but get to work.


	20. Transformation

For Kaidan, being on the Normandy – or at least, its current incarnation – felt so much the same as it once had, as he waited to disembark with anticipation tingling in his fingertips. The ship it self was a little different; engineering was more a maze, and the crew quarters had been vastly improved. But the biggest difference of all was the crew. It’d been good to see Joker and Adams again, but he knew nobody else. There was Vega, whom he’d been in a fire fight with before they’d even been really introduced. And there was Cortez, whom he liked almost on principle alone because his presence meant no more Mako. EDI would take some getting used to, though. He’d never served on a ship with its own AI, and to hear that slightly tinny female voice cut in over the comm. in every corner of the vessel was a little jarring, but she did seem rather useful. Shepard’s new crew seemed like a good one, but all that Kaidan was reminded of was how different things were, and how it’d never be quite the same as it had been.

But once they’d hit ground and the nature of the mission changed, all of the new dynamics didn’t matter. The fact that Kaidan and Shepard worked well together was an intrinsic thing, something unaffected by time or distance, and it was good. He was pleased to see that he still knew her tells, and could anticipate her next moves. Not because it made the fighting any easier; but rather, it was further proof that, after everything, she was still the same soldier that he used to fight alongside.

There was one marked difference about Shepard, though. When she’d ordered Vega to return to the shuttle, Kaidan had noticed it. Shepard had always been a confident leader, but now she issued her orders with this  _tone_. It was demanding and forceful, but not heavy-handed. Vega was a good kid, a good soldier, and he clearly respected Shepard, so he bended to her orders easily. But that tone – Kaidan was pretty sure Shepard could even get a krogan having a bad day to do whatever she told it to do if she spoke to it like that. He didn’t know exactly how Shepard was able to thread that sort of influence through her voice, but that didn’t really matter – he was content to take it for what it was.

***

When Shepard had first seen Kaidan back at Alliance HQ, before it all went to hell, there’d been  _something_ about him that had struck her. But it wasn’t until she stood across from him in the shuttle, en route to Mars, that she could take the time to really consider it. He’d aged, and a little more than he maybe should have in two and a half years. But she knew that the time had been hard on him, and that he’d been hard on himself. She hadn’t noticed the spray of greyed hairs at his temples back on Earth, but she noticed now, and all it did was set off the brightness of his eyes. His jaw was more firm, his stance more confident. And he’d filled out a little too, in all the right ways – being the commander of his own company apparently carried the privilege of more nutritious rations than what the Normandy had ever boasted.

She’d always known that Kaidan was smart, and that hadn’t changed over the years. But where, before, he’d have held back on his suggestions, at least until she’d voiced hers, now he volunteered them forthwith, and it was good. He was capable and proactive, and Shepard saw no way to argue with that. And she didn’t, when Liara quietly pointed it out. Leadership suited Kaidan, and Shepard wasn’t about to discourage it.

In other ways, he was exactly the soldier she’d remembered. When they’d all narrowly missed being sandwiched between the Cerberus and Alliance shuttles, courtesy of Lieutenant Vega, he’d been the first to dive for Liara, helping her to her feet and snaking an arm around her back as support. And when Coré had emerged from the wrecked Cerberus shuttle, all scorched and smoking, he’d been the first to charge forward, emptying nearly a full clip as he rushed her. As had always been his prerogative, his body and his powers were simply means to an end.

Those means had always worked in their favour, before. Until  _that_ moment. Now, the only end they brought was one where Kaidan had been transformed from a strong and capable voice, to a limp silence.

As Vega carried Kaidan back onto the Normandy, and Shepard saw his tawny eyes rolled back in his head, she knew it didn’t matter what had changed over the years, to either of them, or between them. They were still soldiers, same as they’d been that first time he’d given her a crisp salute, and it had only taken a few moments for their common mortality to take over.


	21. Outside

Kaidan shifted, pulling himself up further in his hospital bed. His whole body ached, dully, at the motions, but by this point he couldn’t tell if they were still stiff from the beating he took, or if it was just from being in the bed for too long. He wasn’t sure exactly how long he’d been laid up – his sleeping was sporadic at best, and the days usually bled together in his memory when he tried to partition them out. But it sure  _felt_ like it’d been too long.

He shifted again, angling slightly to his left to look out the full length window of his room. Every single day,  _however_  many it’d been, looked exactly the same outside that window. The manufactured sunlight of the Citadel never changed, never varied– not even by some sort simulated cloud cover. It painted a very idyllic, but very artificial, picture that no doubt placated the civilians on the Citadel, at least to some degree. Something to balance out the snippets that came through on the news. But Kaidan knew differently. There was too much going on outside the window, the hospital, and off the Citadel for him to be trapped in this bed. He understood the doctors’ concern, but what would it matter if his brain got a little more fucked up by using his biotics, if the Reapers were able to keep advancing? He wasn’t looking to take it all on by himself, but he needed to do  _something_.

Just then, there was a soft sound, someone weakly clearing their throat, followed by a shuffle on the waxed hospital floor. Kaidan shifted back so that his shoulders lay square on the bed, and turned his head to the door.

“Shepard. Hey…” he tried to keep the surprise out of his voice – he had, after all, suggested she come by. But hoping she’d come and actually seeing her there both made him feel differently.

“Hey, Kaidan.” She came further into the room, and stood there for a moment, glancing around like she wasn’t sure where she was welcome. She finally settled in the chair near the bed, perching on the edge of it, her hands clasped in her lap.

“You’re looking… good.”

Kaidan cocked an eyebrow at her. He’d seen his reflection just a few hours ago – he knew he looked some sort of distinct opposite of ‘good.’ But he thanked her all the same.

“I, uh…” she shifted, reaching down into a bag that Kaidan hadn’t noticed her carry in. “I brought you this.” She handed him a tall slender bottle of frosted blue glass. “It’s whiskey. Peruvian. Just a little pick-me-up.”

Kaidan turned the bottle over in his hand, trying to remember whether she actually knew of his thing for Peruvian whiskey, or if it was just a coincidence. “Thanks, Shepard. I sort of wish we could crack this thing open right now… Might work better than some of the pain meds they’ve got me on.”

Shepard smiled at him, but it was a little sad. “I’ve got a few extra credits on me – think I could bribe one of the nurses?”

Kaidan laughed, at least as much as his ribs would let him, and set the bottle down by the window. “Better to save it, I think. We’ll need something to celebrate with once I’m out of here.”

Shepard’s chair was a bit closer to the bed when Kaidan looked at her again, but he hadn’t heard her pull it forward.

“How are you, really?”

Kaidan shrugged. “Been better, been worse. Though, I don’t think I’ve ever actually lost count off bruises before this…”

Shepard’s eyes glanced over his bare torso when he said it, probably looking to see for herself just how battered he was. He felt a faint jolt shoot through his centre at the way her eyes roamed over him, but he tamped it down as best he could. That was a road to nowhere, at least right now.

Kaidan cleared his throat, bidding Shepard’s gaze upwards again. She met his eyes with a weak smile and a little sigh.

“It was good to have you back on the Normandy, Kaidan.”

“Yeah, it was good to be back. Got yourself a few fancy upgrades, I couldn’t help but notice.”

“One or two, yeah,” Shepard replied with short laugh, before she went quiet. She looked down at her fingers, as they wrapped around themselves.

Kaidan wanted to take her hand in his and stop her fidgeting. It wasn’t making him nervous or anything like that; he just didn’t like seeing her stress over him.

He let her be quiet for a little while longer, as he looked again at the Citadel outside his window. It looked exactly the same as it had a few minutes ago, an hour ago, a day ago, and two days ago. Then he heard the quiet scrape of metal along the floor, and when he turned back, Shepard had brought her chair up alongside the bed, her forearms resting on the thin mattress.

“Are we good, Kaidan? You and I?”

Kaidan’s heart rate picked up a bit, and he distantly wondered if that was going to set off some machinery that he was linked to somehow. He shifted his position in the bed, trying to turn towards her as much as he could while still lying on his back.

Shepard didn’t seem to want to wait out his hesitation. “It’s just… it’s been so long. And I know a lot’s changed, for both of us. Neither of us are really the same people we were a few years ago.”

“No, that’s true,” Kaidan said. “I guess we’ve both been broken down and rebuilt, in one way or another, huh?”

“Yeah, I suppose so.”

Kaidan looked down at Shepard’s hands, still twisting around. He reached forward, as far as his arm could stretch without him having to move forward, and hooked his forefinger with hers, giving it a slight squeeze. She squeezed back, and ran the pad of her thumb over his knuckle. She could have moved her arm forward and taken hold of his full hand, but she didn’t, and that was okay. He didn’t need anything more from her than what she was willing to give. He just needed her to actually  _know_  he was there, physically, and he hoped even that little bit of contact was grounding enough for her.

Shepard’s pale blue eyes started to go a bit glassy as she looked at him, and then she dropped her gaze to their fingers, still touching. She kept slowly rubbing her thumb over his finger.

“I thought I’d lost you,” she said quietly, just above a whisper. But he heard it, somehow, over the din of the machines that took up nearly half the room.

“Hey,” he said, not sure what exactly to say to her. She moved her arm and grasped more of his hand, interlocking their fingers fully. He hadn’t needed her to do it, but she had, and that was okay too.

“You know, Shepard, how they say that people are meant to see their lives flash before their eyes, before they… y’know, in moments like that? I didn’t really have that.” Kaidan paused, looking at her for a moment. “I guess what I saw was glimpses of the future.”

“Like what?”

“Well there were Reapers and the battles, but there was also all the stuff that has to come after that. Peace and rebuilding, families, and children. It just gave me a reason to keep fighting, I guess.”

“You’re a strong guy, Kaidan. We’ll be a lot better off once we can get you back out there.”

“Trust me, Shepard – there’s nowhere I’d rather be.”

Shepard smiled, a little brighter than she had before. Then she stood, and gave his hand a soft squeeze. “Want me to try & break you out?”

Kaidan chuckled. “You going to organise a rescue, Shepard?”

“I know a guy, who happens to be out in the patient lounge right now. He’s a drell, an assassin.  I’m sure he could get you out of here before anyone even noticed. He’s got a knack for maintenance shafts.”

“I, uh… I’m not going to ask exactly how you know an assassin, Shepard, but I’ll just assume that that’s a story for another time and I’ll just say thanks for the offer for now. I’ll let you know when I really start to go stir crazy.”

Shepard let go of Kaidan’s hand, and then leaned forward, taking his chin between her thumb and forefinger. She pressed a kiss to his cheek, so soft he barely felt it, and he breathed her in while she was close.

And then she pulled away. “Keep me posted, Major,” she said, moving to the doorway.

“Will do, Commander.


	22. Look

Kaidan couldn’t quite shake the way that Shepard had looked at him, with her pistol drawn and pointed at him. The business end of her gun was the last place he ever expected to find himself, but then, he’d had her in his crosshairs too. As soon as he’d seen her walk through that elevator, he’d wanted to lower his gun, but she hadn’t lowered hers, and neither had Garrus or Vega. So he kept his own gun trained on them, on her. He hadn’t really been afraid of what she might’ve done – he knew that it was just a matter of neither of them being able to see more than a corner of the big picture. Still, he never wanted to find himself in that position again.

He’d been waiting for her outside the Normandy’s airlock for a while; he wasn’t sure how long, exactly, but it’d been enough time for him to ditch his hardsuit and change into his casuals. He’d packed a bag too, just a few things. Which was maybe a bit presumptuous of him but he wanted to be prepared. And if it turned out that he’d have to turn back, and unpack it all, he’d be okay with that too, eventually.

A few minutes later, he heard the soft thud of boots approach down the corridor towards the Normandy. He stood up straight and shoved away from the wall that he’d been leaning against just as Shepard came around the corner.

“Hey, Kaidan… I wondered where you’d gone.”

“Hey, Shepard. Yeah, I wanted to talk to you, about what happened…”

Shepard crossed her arms, and he realised that she’d probably done it just to match his own stance. She studied him for a moment and then let out a sigh.

“Either you’re angry, or you’re just working on the patented Alenko smoulder.”

Kaidan huffed out a short laugh and tried to ignore the heat that prickled at his cheeks. “Neither, actually.” He dropped his arms and took a few steps towards her. “I’ve just been trying to figure out how we ended up in a situation like that.”

“Well, I believe it started when you thought I was a gunman chasing down the Councillors and fired off a few rounds into the elevator shaft,” she said sarcastically. “And then I thought I was sandwiched between two Cerberus groups, so up went my gun.”

“I guess that’s fair.” Kaidan paused and inhaled deeply. “Shepard, you were the last person I ever thought I’d have to point a gun at.”

“Likewise, Kaidan.”

“I can’t stop thinking about how it all went down,” he said, shaking his head. He paced a few steps to the left.

Shepard shrugged and put her hands on her hips. “You did what you had to. Udina pulled a gun too.”

“Yeah, I know. But sometimes it matters how a thing goes down.” He turned and faced Shepard again. “I learned that a while ago, after Horizon.”

Shepard moved closer to him and placed a hand softly on his shoulder. “Udina was a piece of shit, Kaidan. Sorry to put it so bluntly, but he was. He’d have shot you if you’d waited a second longer.” She took her hand back and gave him a small smile. “And if you hadn’t shot him, I would’ve. Twice, if he’d shot you first.”

Kaidan sighed and weakly returned her smile. “Yeah… okay.”

“I couldn’t imagine taking all of this on without you.”

“That’s why I’m here, actually. Hackett offered me a position, and it’d be a great opportunity, but I’d turn it down right now if there was a spot for me on your crew.”

“I don’t know,  _Major_.” Shepard had practically purred his title. “You outrank me now… sure you want to take orders from someone under you?”

Kaidan choked a little on his inhale. Of course, his thoughts automatically went  _there_ , images coming to mind of Shepard writhing under him, telling him exactly what she needed. “You’re the only subordinate that I’d take orders from, Commander.”

“Well, then, welcome aboard, Alenko.” She extended a hand to him, and he took it. Her grip was firm, her skin warm.

He let go of her hand after a moment longer than was probably strictly professional, but then, that line had been blurred between him and Shepard a  _long_ time ago. He turned and moved towards the Normandy’s airlock. After a moment, he hadn’t heard Shepard’s footsteps behind him, so he turned back. And caught her staring, rather pointedly, at his ass.

He cocked an eyebrow at her when she met his eyes. “You, uh… get a good look, Shepard?”

She gave him a lopsided smile and moved past him. “For now.”


	23. Companion

All through the rest of the attack on the Citadel, her standoff with Kaidan, and the calls to Hackett and Anderson afterwards, Shepard’s thoughts kept shifting to Thane.

She’d already seen the state of him when she first visited the hospital, back when Kaidan was there too, and she knew that, after suffering the kind of injury that he had, that it was going to be grave. When she was finally free of her other obligations, she rushed to Huerta Memorial. It’d taken some finesse and a little dropping of her own name, but eventually she’d found him, thankfully still alive and not alone.

She passed through the door, nodding at Kolyat who stood at the foot of Thane’s bed. She looked at Thane next, trying her best to smile at him.

“Siha,” he whispered. “I hoped I would see you one more time.” He was interrupted by a cough – something deep and grating and Shepard tried not to wince at the sound of it. “Though I wish it were under better circumstances.”

Shepard moved forward and rested a hand on his arm. “Thane, I’m so sorry.”

“You needn’t apologise, siha. No one could ever ask more of you.”

“I should’ve… I should’ve been able to  _stop_  him.”

Thane took a deep, laboured breath. “He was quick, yes, but not effective. He should be ashamed, that a terminally-ill drell stopped him from reaching his target.”

“Under better circumstances, Thane, I know you’d have put that bastard down, easily.”

A small smile ghosted across Thane’s lips. “Yes. I think I would have.”

He opened his mouth to say something else, but a cough overtook him, and then his whole frame was beset with the struggle to breathe. It sounded like pebbles in his chest, crunching under the heel of someone’s boot.

And then he had the audacity to apologise. “I’m sorry, Shepard. There is much more I would want to say, but breathing is… difficult.”

Shepard swallowed past the lump in her throat and took hold of his hand. “Oh, Thane… please don’t apologise. You’ve done  _nothing_ to apologise for.”

He huffed out a small breath. “Now, we both know that that cannot be true.” He squeezed her hand weakly. “There is something I would like to do, if you would permit me.” He laid his head down to rest on the pillow and held Shepard’s hand to his chest. She felt his breath crackle deep down, under her palm, and she curled her fingers inwards to grasp his hand a little tighter. He whispered a prayer to Kalahira, and Shepard was struck by it. She remembered those times before, on the Normandy, when Thane would explain his beliefs to her. She found his spirituality as poignant now as she had those months ago.

When he finished, he gestured to Kolyat, who pulled a small, worn book from a pocket of his jacket.

Kolyat met Shepard’s questioning gaze and opened to the book to an earmarked page. “Shepard, my father has a passage that he asked me to read. Would you care to join me?”

Shepard blinked back a few tears and nodded, moving over to stand next to him. “O-of course.”

The young drell cleared his throat and began to continue the prayer to Kalahira that his father had started. He then held the book out to Shepard.

She recited the next lines aloud, her voice cracking against her will for it not to. She knew Thane wouldn’t ever have shamed her for crying over him, but she couldn’t let herself do it, not yet – it felt like a disservice to him, especially when she saw him embrace his end with so much grace.

“Guide this one,” she whispered,” to where the traveller never tires, the lover never leaves, the hungry never starve.”

Noticing that there was just one line left in the prayer, she took the book from Kolyat and moved back to Thane’s side, taking hold of his hand again.

She took a slow breath and continued. “Guide this one, Kalahira, and s-she… she will be a companion to you, as she was to me.”

Thane let out a shuddered gasp and turned his head to the left, to face the window there. Shepard handed the book back to Kolyat and leaned over Thane, holding the back of her hand in front his mouth. She strained to sense his breath there, hoping for a clue that there was still a life inside him, but, feeling nothing, she moved her hand up and passed her fingertips over his eyelids to close them.

She stood next to his body for a moment, staring out the window. “Kolyat,” she said, turning to look at him. “Why did that last line say ‘she?’”

Kolyat took a deep breath and pocketed the prayer book. “My father’s wish was not for himself, Shepard. He had already sought his own forgiveness. His wish was for you.”

Shepard exhaled shakily as the realisation set in, and she looked back at Thane’s form. She squeezed his hand one last time and thanked him, without words, because there was nothing she could think to say that did it all justice.

After a moment, she turned to Kolyat and hugged him, asking him to reach her should he ever need anything. He nodded sagely, and then moved past her to bend over his father’s body. Shepard turned away and left them. She ground the heels of her palms into her eyes and moved as quickly as possible back to the Normandy, not willing to let a tear fall until she was alone in her cabin.


	24. Thanks

“Don’t you trust me, Shepard?”

Selina looked to Garrus questioningly, who only gestured with his chin to her hands on the car dash. She looked down and saw that her knuckles had gone white under her grip. She huffed out a laugh and loosened her hold.

“I guess I’m just not used to you being in the driver’s seat.”

Garrus scoffed. “In all my years with C-Sec, I never once got a demerit on my driving record. Besides,” he paused, swerving the car suddenly out from behind a slow – or relatively slower – car. “Quickly is the only way to get anywhere.”

Selina leaned back in her seat and thought, almost triumphantly, that at least there was one person who could no longer give her flak for her Mako driving skills, even if it had been nearly three years since she’d driven the thing.

“Tell me, Shepard. Ever have that one thing you’ve always wanted to do before you died?

“You mean, before the first time I died or…”

Garrus sighed and shook his head. “C’mon, Shepard. Is the Alliance giving out commendations for bad jokes now?”

Selina smiled. “I don’t know Garrus. I think I’ve been too busy trying to live to really think about that.”

“Well, you  _need_ to think about it. Seems rather topical right now, given everything. Me, I’ve always wanted to see the top of the Citadel. Ever since I started at C-Sec, I’d look up there and think, ‘I wanna go up there.’ There are 137 regs against it, but now, I just don’t give a damn.”

“Garrus Vakarian: breaking all the rules.”

Garrus brought the car to a sharp stop as they reached their destination. “There’s a certain immunity that comes with being part of your crew, Shepard. Can’t blame a guy for taking a little harmless advantage.”

Selina followed Garrus along the ledge overlooking the Presidium. “Alright, Garrus, what did you have in mind?”

“I figured it was time to do something stupid. Might be the last chance we ever get.”

“You know, most would probably say that all we’ve been the last three years is stupid.”

“Maybe, but that’s also why they’re all down there, and we’re up here.” Garrus looked out on the Citadel and put his hands on his hips. “Sure has been a hell of a ride.”

“And you’ve been there, almost since day one.”

Garrus’ lip tugged up slightly into a smirk. “And that, Shepard, is  _exactly_  why you’ve gotten as far as you have.”

“Ahh, not just a badass – a  _humble_ badass.”

“The best of us always are.” He moved over to a crate with a couple of Mantis rifles stacked against it, off to the left.

Selina watched as Garrus picked up the guns and tentatively took one from him when he handed it to her. “I actually have  _no_ idea what your plan is right now.”

“We’ve got a score to settle, Shepard.”

“Is a duel with snipers really the best way to settle anything, Garrus?”

Garrus rolled his eyes and grabbed a bottle from the crate, twirling it between his fingers. “We just need to do this one thing. To prove, on record, that not even Commander Shepard can out-gun me.”

“Alright, Vakarian, I’ll bite. But only because I know you’re such a humble guy. That must make you a good loser too, right?”

“Only for you, Commander. Now,” he gestured, holding up the bottle.

Selina hefted the gun and took her stance. She sighted the bottle through the crosshairs and when it was in exactly the right spot, she fired. The shot echoed, probably tenfold, and the bottle shattered into a hundred little pieces.

“Good. But next time, I’m actually going to try to challenge you.” Garrus picked up another bottle and lobbed it at Selina. “Long range is  _my_ domain, Shepard. Not even you could best me.”

Selina smirked and turned the bottle over in her hands. “Quit posturing and just shoot already, Vakarian.”

“Waiting on you, friend.”

Selina took a few steps back and skipped forward, hurling the bottle as far as she could. Garrus brought his gun up and took his shot in one swift movement, turning to wink at her afterwards.

“Bet they don’t teach you how to do  _that_  in the Alliance.”

“Nah, we were too busy learning how to save galaxies and stuff.”

“But you have to admit,” Garrus paused to pick up another bottle. “You should at least be able to save the galaxy with a little finesse, right?”

“I’ve got plenty of finesse!”

“Alright, alright. So show me.”

“In about fifteen seconds, you’re going to be wishing we’d hit that hanar poetry reading instead.”

Garrus laughed, something genuine and deep, and then he reeled back to throw the bottle.

Selina raised the gun and sighted her target again, but this time, she counted one beat too many before pulling the trigger. The bottle sailed clear, down into the water below.

She took a step back and saw Garrus’ grin, and she had to bite the inside of her cheek to stop herself from grinning back.

“I’m Garrus Vakarian, and  _this_ is now my favourite spot on the Citadel!”

Selina chuckled, shaking her head. ‘Okay, okay, King of the Bottle Shooters.” She handed him her gun. “Am I  _ever_ going to live that one down?”

“Sorry, Shepard, not as long as I’m around.” He gestured towards the car, heading for the driver’s seat. “And if I know you as well as I  _know_ I do, you’re going to have me around for a very, very long time.”

Selina slid into the seat next to Garrus and let the grin finally cross her lips. “Thanks, Garrus.” She didn’t elaborate any further than that, to let him know it was a general appreciation, for everything; she knew she didn’t need to.


	25. Simple

If Kaidan didn’t know better, he might have said that he was floating. To be sure, a weight had been lifted from his shoulders, and he felt a little less pressure at his temples than he had a few hours before. But the lightness in his step came from that as much it did the couple of good old Canadian lagers he’d put away, and the warm body that was tucked in under his left arm.

He looked down at Shepard, her arm wrapped tightly around his waist, her thumb hooked into a belt loop at his right hip, and he smiled down at the top of her head. She was looking around the Presidium as they walked, seemingly taking the time to finally see the smaller details of the everyday lives that took up residence there. Their pace was a bit slow, but he was okay with that; it was what he’d been hoping for. He wanted time to savour her, and them.

She’d tried to rush him at first, her hand slowly travelling up his thigh under the table, until finally she’d palmed him through his pants and he’d nearly choked on his sandwich. He swallowed quickly once he’d recovered and kissed her hastily. That had seemed to satisfy her, because she’d relented and they finished their meal without needing to involve the Heimlich.

There hadn’t been many words said between them as they walked back to the Normandy – they both knew their destination, and for his part, he was enjoying the simple feeling of having her drawn up against him. She’d point at and remark on mundane things as they walked, and he’d nod and murmur some sort of response, and it was the closest thing to normal that he’d felt in a long time. He let himself run away with visions of them walking like this in the future, taking regular sanity checks, meandering around whatever station or city they ended up at. Because he intended to make sure that, no matter what, or where, or how, it would be them together, somewhere.

But for now… for now, he was thinking more about the way her hand kept moving from its perch at his hip to drift down and cup his ass. The first few times, he’d pulled her hand back up, mindful of the fact that she was still Commander Shepard and a recognisable figure on the Citadel, tipsy or not. But by the time they reached the Normandy, he’d given into it, and let himself relish in the almost possessive nature of the gesture. He kissed her in the airlock, and he thought, as his hands roamed over her hips, that  _that_ was the best way to endure just how long the decon scan took.

Once past the airlock, they’d created a distance between each other, and they moved through the CIC as casually as possible. Shepard stopped to answer a few questions for Samantha, and he wandered over to the elevator as she did. Even those few moments of lost contact seemed unbearable to him, and when the elevator doors closed behind them, he took her by the hip and backed her up against him, slowly grinding his growing hardness into the firm muscle of her ass. She’d hummed something low and played along, arching her back and leaning into him. His head lolled back as he relished the feeling of her, and he didn’t notice it when the elevator stopped until she was laughing at him and pulling him out by the wrist.

She stopped outside the door to her cabin and patched in to EDI, asking the AI to take her off the comm. lines for the rest of the night. The moment that EDI acknowledged the request, Shepard turned to Kaidan and pushed him up against the wall next to the cabin door, hungrily kissing him. He groaned at the voracity of it, and the feeling of her fingers delving into his hair sent hot threads through him. He gripped her at her rib cage, his hands resting just under her bust, and he felt every deep breath that she took. To have her in his hands like that, breathing and alive, was all that he’d been wanting since she’d been ripped away from him. And now that he had her again, he wanted nothing more than to keep her there.

When she finally pulled away, she looked up at him through her lashes, a small smile tugging at the side of her mouth. He smiled back and leaned down to kiss her again, but she ducked away.

“I may be offline, Kaidan, but that doesn’t mean that someone isn’t going to wander up here.”

Kaidan huffed out a breath and let her slip away from him. He followed her into the cabin and moved slowly forwards as she flipped the lock behind them.

“Damn, Shepard,” he said, surveying the large and well-appointed suite. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were the Alliance’s favourite or something.”

Shepard chuckled and started to shimmy out of the leather jacket she wore. He moved to her and shooed her hands away.

“Let me,” he said, sliding his hands up to her shoulders and pushing the jacket away. He bent his head and kissed along her collarbone, and then doubled back to cover her pulse at the base of her neck, feeling it beat against his lips. He felt obsessed with any sign of life from within her, as though if he paid appropriate homage, it wouldn’t slip away again.

Shepard tossed the jacket towards the desk, and it landed partially covering the paraphernalia of her life that lay there – dossiers and briefings and reports. There was more there than she could probably ever reasonably hope to read, Kaidan thought, but he also knew that she’d certainly try. But at least the jacket obscured it all for now.

He moved over to the fish tank that stretched the length of one wall and peered inside. There were at least three different types in there, all vibrantly covered, and he counted two jellyfish as well.

He looked over at her, and then hooked at thumb back at the tank. “How do you manage to keep these things alive? You’re never in here.”

Shepard laughed and sidled up next to him. “AIs are a hell of a thing, Kaidan. You should have seen me last year… let’s just say I had to restock this thing more than few times.”

Kaidan watched some of the more colourful fish intently as they darted around, and then Shepard cleared her throat, and snaked herself in between him and the tank.

“Sorry, Kaidan, but I don’t really enjoy being passed over for a few fish.”

Kaidan chuckled and took her by the hips, leaning down to bury his face in her neck. “Never thought you were the jealous type, Shepard,” he said against her skin.

Shepard wrapped her arms around his neck, and took his earlobe between her teeth. He sucked in a breath at the sensation, and he backed her up against the glass of the tank, slowly moving his hands up under her shirt.

“I’m not jealous,” she whispered, her breath ghosting hotly over his ear. “I just want you to fuck me, that’s all.” She pushed her hips forward, up against his.

He grunted and pushed back and they built up a slow sort of rhythm, grinding into each other. She swiped her tongue over his lips and he opened his mouth, letting her in eagerly. He unclasped her bra and pushed it out of the way as he cupped her breasts under her shirt. He kneaded and massaged, and she keened, humming into his mouth. She pulled away, taking his lower lip back in her teeth as she did. She leaned her head back and held his eye for a moment, and he kept working her breasts, passing a roughened thumb over a nipple. She grinned and arched into his touch, and then she clasped the buckle of his belt. She pushed and slid out from under him, moving around his side and pulling him along with her by the waistband. She spun him around and then pushed his back up against the glass of the fish tank.

Shepard whipped her shirt and bra up over her head in one movement, then she cupped her breasts, standing half a step away from Kaidan. His throat went dry as he watched her fondle herself, her eyes falling shut.

“Selina, god…” he muttered feably, his pants tightening further against his upper thigh as he grew harder.

She opened her eyes just as he went to undo his pants and she waved his hands away, working the belt buckle herself.

“Nuh-uh,” she said with a shake of her head, her long fingers brushing against his lower belly as she undid the button of his pants.

She pulled him forward by the waistband, and then pushed his pants and his boxers down over his hips. She followed the movement with her body, kissing a wet trail down his middle as she went.

She kneeled in front of him, her mouth ending up just to the side of his cock, and she let out a hot breath over his over-sensitive skin. He let his head lean against the glass, a deep groan escaping him. She hovered there, working her hands over his thighs, up over his hips and around to cup his ass. He could still feel her breath glancing over the hollow of skin at the top of his thigh. He knew she was taking her time on purpose, but he was thankful for it. He opened his eyes and looked down to see her looking back up at him. She smirked and then ducked her head, and the next thing he felt was her hot tongue swiping over his balls. He groaned again, his eyes screwing shut and his head falling forward. She still had him by the ass, and she kneaded into the muscle as she moved her mouth to the base of his erection. She licked up the underside of it, pressing her tongue into the vein there, and she brought a hand round to grasp him at the shaft.

“Selina,” he ground out through clenched teeth, his fingers moving into her hair that was pulled into a loose ponytail.

She hummed in response, her tongue clamped over the head of his dick and he had to resist the urge to buck his hips. Still working his shaft with one hand, she moved the other to cup his balls, gentling rolling them between her fingers. With the three sensations, he knew it wouldn’t be long for him. He opened his eyes and saw a wash of blue light, and he thought for a moment that he’d flared, until he remembered that she had him up against the fish tank.

She must have sensed that he was close, because she moved both hands to his shaft and worked him up and down, twisting around him as she did, her tongue swirling over his swollen tip. He let out a whimper and bucked towards her and she took his full length into her mouth, swallowing him as he came.

He pulled her up then and devoured her mouth, faintly tasting himself on her tongue. She pulled away a moment later and padded over to her bed, sitting on the edge of it. He stepped out of his pants and followed her, pulling off his shirt as he went, letting it fall wherever it did. There as a time when he’d have stopped to place it somewhere off the floor, but not now, not anymore.

He stood in front of her by the bed and pushed her back at the shoulder. She laid back and inched herself up the bed, leaning on her elbows. He hooked his forefingers into the hem of her underwear and pulled it down as she moved away from him, and then he crawled over her. He kissed her deeply, running a hand up over her stomach, bringing it to rest between her breasts.

“You’re finally mine again,” he whispered against her mouth.

He felt her smile and then she pushed her chin forward, angling to kiss him harder.

“I never  _stopped_  being yours, Kaidan,” she said a moment later, her voice low and quiet. “You just didn’t know it.”

Kaidan rolled over to lie along her side, and he nuzzled into her neck, breathing her in. “Sometimes I just can’t believe you’re alive again, Selina. And then you smile at me or you laugh a little, and it feels like nothing ever changed.”

Shepard turned her head and put a hand to his cheek, kissing him softly. “It was just an interlude, Kaidan. That’s all it was. This is what’s real, what always has been real.”

He kissed her again, passionately. He moved his hand to the side to cover her breast and slowly rubbed her nipple with his thumb. She arched into him, and slid her tongue into his mouth. And then she mewled, something almost urgent. He opened his eyes and saw that she was working herself, building up to a quick pace. He groaned, a deep rumble, and he leaned down over her chest, taking a nipple into his mouth. She gasped as he laved his tongue over her, and she started rocking her hips up against her hand. He was starting to get hard again, to the sounds of her getting herself off, and he pushed himself up to get a better angle on her chest. He moved to her other nipple, nuzzling his face into her skin as he suckled.

“Oh, fuck, Kaidan,” she panted, arching her back up and angling her hips downwards. “Please, are you –?”

He cut her off, covering her mouth with his and shifting over her, kneeling between her thighs. He hovered there for a moment, his tip just outside her folds. He broke the kiss and leaned back a bit, taking himself in hand, slowly guiding into her. He paused then, just barely inside – he needed to orientate himself, to get his bearings. He’d agonised, night after night, dreaming of moments like this, and he reeled for a moment at the thought that now it was finally real.

Until she moaned, grasping at his shoulders, and he thrust into her to the hilt. She cried his name and he moaned in answer, already feeling her start to tighten around him. He moved in her slowly, not wanting to rush, not needing to. In the bigger picture of it all, he knew their time was probably limited, but for now they had this night, and he’d make it last as long as he could.

Shepard drew him down to her, kissing him deeply and then whispering against his mouth, “I love you.”

“Always,” he murmured back, not missing a beat.

Kaidan pulled out of her nearly all the way and slowly thrust back into her again, swallowing her gasps with his mouth and trying to burn the moment to his brain as he repeated the motion.

He kept a languorous pace, and she gripped onto his back, her mouth pressed against the skin at the top of his shoulder. She whimpered out his name as she climaxed, shuddering around him. He gave a few more deep thrusts and came a few moments after her. He kissed her cheek and buried his face into her neck, whispering her name into her skin as he relaxed. He felt her bring a hand up to rest on the scar at the base of his skull, carding her fingers through his hair there; it was a simple gesture, wordless but so expressive all the same, and  _real_.


	26. Sunset

Selina had found herself carrying a lot of emotions lately. Anger and frustration were common, with exhaustion tending to trail closely behind. There were sometimes glimmers of happiness, but those were always so short, so increasingly infrequent, and usually marred by the cold realities that seemed to loom over her and thwart her at every turn. Other certain emotions had no business being in her life, it seemed; optimism was foolish and hope, audacious. The only thing Selina could rely on now, to maintain a hold on her rapidly-eroding chance of success was to simply follow the intel and try to make some sort of educated guess.

Thessia was meant to be the game-changer. She was meant to walk out of the Temple of Athame with a greater understanding of the Catalyst and the Crucible. She was meant to help the asari begin to take back their lives from the Reapers.

But instead, she stood at the entrance of the Temple, watching as two Reapers touched down less than a hundred feet away, backlit by an intense sunset. Maybe that sunset would have otherwise been breathtaking, something worth taking a picture of, and maybe with Kaidan, if he’d been up for it. But the only purpose it served now was to be a backdrop for the havoc.

Kaidan had tried to comfort her then, reassuring her that he was still at her side, just over her shoulder. Selina wished, desperately, that she could turn off the guilt and shed the weight of the failed responsibilities, and be satisfied with nothing more than the support he offered. It was valuable to her, no question. But she needed more; she needed the right outcomes, and for the mission goals to be met.

For, as beset by a gamut of emotions as she’d been, it was those emotions that had allowed her to become who she was and to achieve all that she had during her service. Pride drove her to demand success; anger drove her to pursue justice; and guilt drove her to seek atonement. She could compartmentalise into as many degrees as necessary to help her to see the solution to a problem. She could be decisive, and knew how and when to act.

But what Selina faced now was bigger than all of that. She couldn’t fit this into compartments, to be shuffled and rearranged according to her logic, because the Reapers’ goal was domination, and extinction. There was no reason to it, just some abstract, cyclical justification that she couldn’t manage to understand, despite her attempts.

There was no precedence from upon which she could draw; no previous successes or gains that could help her to see an end to all of this. The closest thing she’d had to that had just been stolen by Cerberus, leaving the shell of it all to crumble behind her.

She wanted to run away from the Temple and into the fray that stretched before them beyond the horizon. But the massive Reapers groaned and a beam shot forth, obliterating the tall buildings that stood in their path.

She could hear the fighting down there, and not through any sort of comm. line; it was all direct sound waves, as screams and futile shots were carried over to her on the warm air of dusk. Another beam swiped across the landscape and the sounds of battle ebbed instantly, and almost completely. The two Reapers slowly glided forward, leaving nothing but destruction and death in their wake. Desperation took root within Selina then, as the vibrant oranges and pinks of the Thessian sky blended with the crimson of the Reapers’ beams.

Turning her back on it all, she signalled to Cortez for evacuation. Because, by some twist in a logic that certainly wasn’t her own, she got to leave and live at least another day.


	27. Letters

A surge of panic coursed through Selina and she jolted awake, disoriented. She blinked rapidly a few times, her eyes acclimatising to the dim light of her cabin. In her dream, she’d seen flames, licking all over her body, devouring her, and that boy… that boy she’d seen back on Earth, whom she’d dreamt about before, and whom she wasn’t sure was actually real; nobody seemed to have seen him during the Reaper attack, save for her. It’d been a long time since her last dream like that, but it was no less unsettling.

She looked around and instantly felt herself calm when she remembered where she was. Kaidan’s arm lay under her head, and she could feel his steady pulse at his elbow against her temple. His other arm lay draped over her waist, and his legs were tucked tightly up underneath hers. The lighting was soft, being given off by the lamp at the far side of the bed that neither of them had taken to the time to turn off. The way they’d made love a few hours before had been unlike any other time; it was slower, much more sensual, and almost reverent, where the end goal hadn’t necessarily been to get each other off, but more to memorise those fleeting moments of ultimate intimacy.

She felt worn nearly the whole way through, her mind rended into countless pieces over the constant reports and briefings and analyses. She had more blood on her hands than she’d had since Bahak, and every loss weighed heavily on her shoulders. But Kaidan had been her one reprieve, a welcome distraction with that whiskey, with the colour that matched the warmth of his eyes and the peatiness that matched the husk of his voice. He didn’t ask her to analyse or justify or even understand the outcomes, if she hadn’t launched into it on her own already.

It overwhelmed her sometimes, to have someone put so much blind trust in her and in her ability to keep them all alive. Sometimes she was able to draw inspiration and motivation from it, but truthfully, it mostly intimidated her. She’d lived her whole life alone, before joining the Alliance. There’d almost always been friends or some sort of distant support network that she could call upon, even if she never really did, but none of it had ever mattered as much to her as Kaidan.

Most of the time it was easy for her to keep out of the deepest trenches of her thoughts and lose herself in him. And she loved those moments best, whether they were talking, or sitting together in silence, or calling out each others’ names in the dark. If she could have nothing in this galaxy save for his love and a breath in her lungs with which to savour it, she could be content.

Selina pushed herself up to sitting, trying to move as smoothly as possible so as not to wake Kaidan. He shifted at the loss of contact and rolled onto his back with a deep exhale and a muffled sort of noise from somewhere in his throat that pulled at the corner of Selina’s mouth. She braced a hand on her knee and ran her other hand through her hair, gathering and rearranging the ends together around one side of her neck. She was about to push herself up from the bed when she heard another deep breath and a quiet grunt over her shoulder, and she stopped.

“What’s up?” Kaidan whispered his voice groggy and laced with sleep.

Selina smiled at him over her shoulder as he rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes. “Nothing, it’s okay. Go back to sleep.”

Kaidan drew toward her and propped himself up on one arm, and she could feel the warmth of his chest up against the small of her back as he placed a kiss on her shoulder.

“Why are you getting up? You should sleep.”

“I just need to do one quick thing, and then I’ll come back.”

Kaidan leaned in and buried his face in her exposed neck, his fingers tangling in the ends of her hair tucked around the other side. “You’ve done everything you possibly could by now, Selina.”

Selina smiled as his stubble tickled her skin and she brought a hand up to back of his head. “Not quite. I just remembered something that I’d been meaning to tell someone, and I want to do it while I still have the chance.”

Kaidan pulled back and looked at her, his eyebrows drawn together. “You make that sound so final,” he said quietly, sadly.

Selina was a little taken back by his tone; he was even more pragmatic than she was a lot of the time, and sometimes she was surprised by how readily he accepted the realities of their work. The sadness that laced through his voice caught her off-guard and her mouth pulled into a frown.

She ran her thumb over his cheek, just under a tawny eye, and then down his face to his jaw, ending finally at his chin. She angled his face upwards with a knuckle under his chin and bent forward to kiss him. She was trying to be reassuring, but he let out a faint noise, nearly a whimper, and she felt even worse.

“Kaidan,” she whispered as she pulled away, running her hand down to rest in the centre of his chest. “You know how this goes…”

Kaidan nodded. “I know, I know. I just… sometimes it settles in pretty harshly and it scares me.” He looked at her for a moment and then sighed. “It’s been so intense, the time we’ve spent together lately. It feels like a lifetime, but it hasn’t been, and I’m not ready for this to be over yet.”

“Neither am I… I’ll never be ready for that.” She let out a deep sigh and curled her fingers in against his skin. “I have no idea what we’re going to face down there tomorrow…”

“I’ll be there with you, through everything.”

Selina nodded and smiled at him, running her hand down and off his chest onto the bed. “No one else I’d rather be there with,” she said before finally rising from the bed.

“Be quick, and get back here. We’ve still got a few hours left,” he said, giving her a quick wink.

“I thought you said I needed to sleep?” Selina teased as she pulled Kaidan’s discarded t-shirt over her head.

Kaidan lay back on the pillows and closed his eyes, but he grinned anyway. “You’re wasting time…”

Selina laughed and padded over to her terminal and flicked it on. For once, she ignored the new messages that were waiting for her attention, and opened a new composition window. She glanced over past the screen at Kaidan laying on the bed, his eyes close and an arm drawn up under his head, his chest slowly rising in sleep. She swallowed past the lump that formed in her throat, and started the last letter she would write before there would be no more time to.


	28. Promise

Kaidan hadn’t anticipated the explosion. He’d been focused on reaching the Crucible beacon, Shepard a few feet ahead and Garrus at his left. His eyes kept darting from the back of Shepard’s head, to make sure she was unharmed, to the beacon, to gauge just how much further they had to go. But then the Reaper beam was loosed and that truck had barrelled into him and Garrus, hard enough to knock him out, for a few moments anyway.

He’d come to, to Garrus hauling him up. There was a ringing in his ear but he could hear Shepard’s voice through it, yelling indiscriminate words. It was so chaotic, so cacophonous, that he couldn’t make out what she was saying. But then the Normandy landed a short distance away, and Garrus started carrying him back towards it, and Kaidan started to panic. Shepard was still there but she kept looking back at the beacon. They didn’t have any time – why were they heading away from it?

Garrus was stumbling as they hobbled, and Kaidan guessed that he’d been injured too. Kaidan was sore, all over, and he was trying to put it out of his mind – there was still work to be done, and it was more important than the shoulder that he thought was dislocated and the ribs that he knew were broken. And then Garrus was carrying him up the shuttle ramp of the Normandy, and Kaidan could finally hear Shepard’s voice clearly.

“Garrus, get both of you to Chakwas, now! I’ll ping you as soon as I can!”

She started to turn away and Kaidan felt a new surge of panic course through him. “Shepard! Wait!”

Shepard turned back to him, and the pain in her eyes nearly tore him in two. “Kaidan, I need you to go with Garrus.”

“Yeah, that’s not going to happen.” Kaidan planted his feet but he didn’t let go of Garrus. “Selina, you can’t go alone!” His voice was strained, his throat feeling like it was on fire.

Shepard walked towards him, her look pleading. “Kaidan, you know that I have to. There’s no other way.”

Kaidan squeezed his eyes shut to hold off the tears that prickled behind his eyes. None of them could be sure of what lay on the other side of the beacon, if it even connected with anything at all. The thought of her going in alone knocked all the air from him, but he knew she was losing precious seconds in tending to him, because he knew that she was going up anyway. He opened his eyes again and reached a hand towards her.

“I can’t lose you again.”

Shepard gave him a weak half-smile. “I’ll come back to you, Kaidan. I promise.”

It was a promise that he knew she couldn’t keep, and she had to have known it too. Still, he had little else to believe in now, if not her and her will to see this through, and so he drew her into him. She cupped a gloved hand to his face and he kissed her forcefully. He’d told her the night before that their last weeks together had felt like a lifetime, and now he tried desperately to fit that lifetime’s worth of love into one kiss.

After the war, there’d be time to spend together, just them with no distraction. There’d be time to bring her home, to Mom & Dad, to show her that side of his life. There’d be time for everything: a proposal, a long engagement, a wedding that wasn’t too big but still fitting of Shepard, a honeymoon somewhere far-flung and isolated without omni-tools or datapads, and eventually maybe even a baby or two. There would be time for a  _life_ together, after the war. There was so much more for them, he knew, if only they’d get the chance. But he also knew that, whatever she promised, her fate wasn’t up to her.

Too soon, she pulled away.

He took in a ragged breath that burned as it circled through his lungs. “I love you, Selina.”

“Always,” she replied, taking her hand back from his cheek. She took a few steps backwards, her eyes telling him more in those few moments more than she’d have been able to say in words. And then she turned away, running full bore back towards the beacon.

Kaidan let out a strangled sort of noise, and he collapsed against Garrus, who guided him deeper in to the shuttle bay of the Normandy. He looked over his shoulder, just as the shuttle doors began to close, hoping for one last glimpse of her, but he couldn’t make her out from the monochromatic grey scene of destruction.

 ***

 It was quiet in the med bay. No explosions, no gunshots, no husks’ groans, and no whine that warned a split-second before a Reaper beam lashed out. Chakwas had made Kaidan sit on a med table, and Garrus was helping her unclip the pieces of his hardsuit. Neither of them was speaking, and Kaidan thought he preferred the din of the battlefield, honestly – at least Shepard was out there in it. He should’ve been out there with her, putting their faith in that piece of Prothean tech together, hoping it would actually get them to the Citadel and not just get them killed.

Chakwas moved off somewhere to the back of the room, behind Kaidan’s field of vision. Garrus was sitting on the table next to him, facing him, talking to him. Kaidan felt numb, and he wasn’t sure he could speak past the tightness in his throat anyway, so he didn’t say anything.

“You know that if anyone can do this, it’s her,” Garrus said. He hadn’t bothered to take his own armour off yet, but Kaidan knew he was injured, somewhere. “Shepard’s tough; she won’t quit until the thing gets done.”

Kaidan got stuck on the word  _quit_. He didn’t want her to quit at all, whether the thing was done or not. He knew Garrus meant nothing by the turn of phrase, but it struck Kaidan was a strangely colloquial way to say she wouldn’t let herself die. His throat constricted even more at that thought – it was so damn tight that Kaidan wasn’t sure how he was even breathing still.

“It’ll be just like the last time,” Garrus continued. “With Sovereign. When Shepard pulled herself out of the rubble and did it with that smug smile on her face. You remember that?”

Of course Kaidan remembered; he’d always remember. There wasn’t ever going to be a moment with her that he’d forget, and if at some point in is life he ever did start to lose those memories of her, he’d put one between his eyes.

Garrus let out a sigh and his mandibles clacked once. Kaidan had never been able to work out exactly what the gesture meant, but now he figured it could be exasperation, or maybe defeat.

“Look, Kaidan. None of us have any idea what she’s going to face up there. But I do know she’ll fight damn hard, and I promise you, she’ll come back, smug as ever.”

Kaidan huffed out a breath and laid back on the med table, laying an arm over his eyes, the rough material of his jump suit scratching against his forehead. He didn’t want to listen to more promises, not when people were making them and tossing them around like they were weightless. He knew where it was coming from – some dark place that needed a sliver of hope. But it meant fuck-all to him now. He appreciated that Garrus was trying, but he didn’t want to listen to more pointless words. He was only interested in action and getting up that beacon himself, but since that wasn’t going to happen, he just wanted it all to  _stop_.

Later, after Garrus had left and Chakwas had examined him and had given him some sort of pain meds, he realised he was alone in the med bay. He didn’t know how long it had been since he’d last seen Shepard; maybe it’d been an hour, or a couple. Too long, either way. He felt the faint hum on his left wrist that he always felt when a new message came through to his omni-tool. He debated ignoring it, definitely in no mood. But then he began to wonder if maybe there’d been a development of some sort, and he felt a knot start to twist in his gut. He raised his left arm and called up his omni-tool, then tapped the new message – titled simply  _Some things_  – and tucked his right arm under his head to prop it up.

It was from Shepard. The knot in his stomach tightened more as he read her name with its title – Selina Shepard, Commander, Systems Alliance. The timestamp showed it’d been sent 0237 that morning, and he figured the delay must have had something to do with the Reapers, somehow. They fucked everything up lately. Kaidan took a deep breath and read the message.

_Kaidan,_

_You’re asleep right now, in my bed. You look really peaceful, and that’s making me smile a little bit, considering what we’re going to have to go do in a few hours. I can see your chest rising and falling from here, and it’s such a simple thing, seeing someone’s chest fill with a breath, but it’s honestly one of the most reassuring things I’ve ever seen. I can’t really explain it… you know I’m not the best with words, so hopefully you’ll forgive me for not even attempting to._

_There are a lot of things that I wanted to say to you, Kaidan. And I decided to do this in a letter, because I need to be able to take the time to make sure I say everything the right way. You deserve nothing less from me. You’re the single most important person in my life. I’ve never been so close to one person before. Growing up, I never had that one person that I knew I could rely on. My relationships with people were always in flux, and most didn’t last very long. Even after I joined the_ _Alliance_   _, I kept most people at a distance – I figured, no closeness, no getting hurt when someone inevitably goes down._

 _But then, I met you. I was drawn to you the moment I met you. You remember that day, when I joined the_ _Normandy_   _? I couldn’t stop myself from smiling at you, no matter how nearby_ _Anderson_   _was, no matter that I was your CO. I know we joke about it now, but I honestly mean it when I say that regs really were important to me. You made me negate all that, though. You were so honest, and open, and understanding. I couldn’t help myself. But I’m glad for it – I couldn’t imagine having done any of this without you. I don’t know if I’d been able to. Even before, with the Collectors… you were always in the back of my mind, whether I wanted you to be there or not. And then, when you called me, a few hours before the Omega 4… I did need to get going when I signed off, but I had a little spare time. It was just that I could feel these tears burning behind my eyes, and I couldn’t let you see me cry over you like that – it’d been too long, it would’ve been awkward._

_You were there with me, on that Collector ship. I thought about you so damn much then, Kaidan. I was so done, so tired. I kept hearing your voice in my head as we were fighting our way through that thing. It was horrific, and fucking hard, but you were encouraging me the whole way, my mind making your voice say things that I’d never actually had the chance to hear you say._

_And then when I finally saw you again, in_ _Vancouver_   _. Everything felt right, when you held me on the_ _Normandy_   _. It was a quick thing, I know, but it made me realise that I needed you back in my life, for real. Seeing you in the hospital, so bruised up, was the worst thing, but you were so strong. And I realised later, when we had our guns pointed at each other, that I still loved you, a lot, and that I’d honestly never really stopped._

_I never will stop loving you, Kaidan. No matter what happens tomorrow. I have no idea what we’re going to face, and if I think about it for more than half a second, I get really fucking scared, like I am now. But then I look at you, like I am now, and I feel better. I feel almost invincible when I look at you. But I know that I’m not – none of us are. So whatever happens, just know that I’ve loved you, more than I could ever hope to properly express, and I always will love you._

_I’ve been trying not to think about what the future might hold for us, once this is done. It hurts a little, when my thoughts automatically go to some dark place like that. But I know that I’d want my future to be you. It could be anywhere, in any sort of life, but as long as it was you, I’d be happy. And that’s what’s going to get me through tomorrow, and whatever comes after it._

_I don’t know really know how to end this, and I don’t really want to. But you’ve just let out a big snore, down in my bed, and as much as I want to keep writing this and telling you over and over again how much you mean to me, I’d rather get down to you and kiss you and show you. So that’s what I’m going to go do. You can thank me later, after you’ve read this._

_I love you, Kaidan. Always._

_– Selina_

Kaidan couldn’t breathe; he felt like he was in a vacuum with no air. The tears that burned down his cheeks had started when he got halfway through the second paragraph, and now he was gasping for air, trying to hold back the sobs. They were tears of grief, yes, but he was angry. He felt so angry, thinking about how she’d been ripped away from him so suddenly, and how she was alone wherever she was. And that wasn’t right. She’d done too much for everyone else to be alone.

He wondered briefly why she hadn’t asked him whether he’d read it earlier that day, but they’d been on the go since they got out of bed, and it wasn’t really like her to ask about that kind of thing anyway.

He felt the anger bubble up through him, and it burst from his chest as an anguished shout. He smashed his left hand down onto the med table underneath him, and his omni-tool flickered and made a few crackling noises before it snapped away. He rubbed the back of his right hand into his eyes to staunch the tears, so hard that he saw little grainy flecks behind his eyelids. He let out a harsh huff of air and then he pulled himself up and off the med table.

His hardsuit had been piled over near Chakwas’ desk, and he went to it, snapping the pieces into place quickly, relying on muscle memory to get it done properly. He was still sore, the pain meds either worn off or never doing much in the first place, but he grit his teeth and moved and twisted through it, because he owed her at least that much.

Not knowing how long they’d been separated meant that he had no idea where she could possibly be. But he was going to find out, and then he was going to pull rank and make Joker take them there. He ran towards the CIC, foregoing the elevator and taking the stairs two at a time. The CIC was emptier than it usually was, only the crew required to keep the frigate operational were on hand. Kaidan stormed through to the bridge, where he was met with a large, tanned hand in the centre of his chest, halting him.

“Out of my way, Lieutenant. I need the comm. line.”

Vega shook his head slightly, and angled his body to stand in front of Kaidan. “I’m sorry, Major, but –”

“Vega, move! I need to speak to Hackett.”

“It’s done, Alenko. It’s over.”

Kaidan felt all of the air rush out of him like a punch to the gut. “W-what do you mean –”

“She did it. She and Anderson, together.”

“Thank god,” Kaidan whispered as a wave of relief washed over him. She’d done it, and she wasn’t alone. “Well? We need to get up there. Joker!” He looked past Vega’s hulking shoulders, to the cockpit. “Citadel, now!”

Vega let out a shuddered breath. “That’s not… We can’t…”

Kaidan pushed Vega’s hand away. “What? Tell me what’s going on!”

“We can’t go to the Citadel, Kaidan.” Garrus came forward from the cockpit and stood next to Vega. “It’s… unstable.”

All of the blood fled Kaidan’s head, and he stumbled to the side, bracing himself against the wall of the ship. “B-but, Shepard? And Anderson?”

“I’m sorry, there’s nothing –”

Kaidan was about to lash out – at Garrus, at Vega, at anything and nothing in particular – when the Normandy’s thrusters kicked in.

“Brace yourselves! We’ve gotta go!” Joker called, as he threw the thrusters again.

Kaidan moved into the cockpit, stumbling backwards as the ship lurched forward. He gripped the back of Joker’s chair, his eyes scanning the nav holos on the command console.

“What is that…?”

“No fucking clue, Alenko. It just burst out of the relay behind us, which is now ripped to pieces, by the way.”

Whatever it was, it was bearing down on them quickly. Kaidan could see it on the Normandy’s rear camera screen – a massive wave of red energy, sparking and undulating as it surged forward. Joker had the Normandy at full throttle, and the overheat warning system had kicked in with its loud bleeping, but the wave was gaining on them still. Until finally it caught up to them, and engulfed the ship as the cockpit flooded with red light.


	29. Diamond

The final push against the Reapers in London had happened on a Tuesday. It was such an inane detail, but Kaidan remembered it anyway. It was probably the Alliance training, always needing to know what day it was, even if you were off in some remote system that didn’t even operate on the galactic standard calendar.

It took Alliance Search and Rescue until late the following Saturday to find Shepard. She was there in the dark, somewhere in the core of the Citadel, which Kaidan figured probably would’ve been dark regardless of what time of day it was when they found her. Hackett hadn’t been very forthcoming with details during that first call, but there’d been a fallen support beam and several slabs of concrete involved. They found her on Saturday, but it took them until Sunday night to finally extract her. By dawn on Monday, she was on an emergency medical transport to Vancouver.

It took the Normandy until Monday afternoon to reach the makeshift field office of Alliance HQ from whatever planet they’d crashed on. Their slow progress was due to seemingly the whole relay network being destroyed. The ship was a little scratched up, and Joker swore that the drive core sounded off, but they reached Vancouver eventually. Kaidan hoped that Hackett had at least some sort of answer to explain what had happened, though it was obvious that whatever that red wave of energy was, it’d done a number on their intersystem tech.

Kaidan hoped Hackett had information on Shepard too. He felt guilty for not being the one to look for her, to find her, to be the first voice she heard – assuming she’d been conscious. He didn’t actually know if she had been, but he knew that she was alive, in whatever state, and that was enough for him. It was everything, now.

Kaidan had a short briefing with Hackett, once they finally reached Alliance HQ. The whole command hub of the Alliance had been relocated to an old seven-storey office building out in Burnaby. There wasn’t enough space to land, between the water in Burrard Inlet and the forest of the foothills of the mountain that butted up behind the site, and the highway that ran between the two, so they’d had to dock the Normandy at a space port out in Richmond, and take a shuttle in-land. It seemed ridiculous and inconvenient, but it was what needed to be done. At this stage, nearly a week after the Reapers left Earth, there wasn’t much else that they could do. And like with everything else, at least they were all alive to do it.

Hackett didn’t know much. All he could tell Kaidan was what the Search and Rescue team had surmised from the wreckage of the Citadel, which was, basically, that it’d been bad. Anderson was dead, found one level down from Shepard, almost directly beneath her. Kaidan hadn’t realised the Citadel had so many levels and tunnels at its core, and it’d apparently been a surprise to everyone else too. They’d also found the Illusive Man up there, which caused a massive knot to form in Kaidan’s gut when Hackett mentioned it. He’d known Cerberus had to have been involved somehow, but how had he gotten there? And why had he been found with a bullet wound clean through his head? Kaidan had a lot of questions for Shepard, but he knew everyone else would too, and he was okay with being patient for the answers.

She was at Vancouver General, which was acting as the primary triage for the greater Vancouver area. Hackett had said she wasn’t eligible for visitation yet, and Kaidan had protested, demanding special clearance in as deferent a tone as he could muster. Hackett had simply shaken his head before coming round the desk and placing a hand on Kaidan’s shoulder, saying it was for everyone else’s sake as much for her own. Kaidan felt the bottom of his optimism drop out, when he heard that. Hackett was a hard-ass, sure, and he probably treated regs like they were his lifeblood, but Kaidan knew he was also a reasonable, compassionate man, and under different circumstances, he probably could’ve gotten him to sign off on a clearance. But it had to be bad, so damn bad, for him to put it like that. There probably wasn’t any other way for Hackett to put it, though – anything less and Kaidan would’ve found some way to get to her, and Hackett had to have known that.

“As soon as she’s cleared, Major. You’ll be the first I call.”

Kaidan nodded and thanked the admiral, dragging himself out of his office, past the dated furniture and dirty windows.

He’d released the Normandy’s crew on leave until further notice. No point in making them hang around the frigate when there was nowhere for them to really go. It felt a little surreal to think of the crew as being under his command. He’d never go so far as to call them ‘his’ crew – that’d never be the case, no matter what happened; they were Shepard’s team, and he was merely filling in for now, for however long it took.

Sitting outside the HQ building, Kaidan pulled up his omni-tool and dialed Mom. She’d send him a quick message a few days ago, to let him know that they were back in Vancouver, so he knew that at least they were home. There hadn’t been any time, earlier, to let her know he’d be around, but he knew that that wouldn’t matter.

She answered the call in disbelief, her voice breaking as soon as he’d said ‘hey Mom,’ but she didn’t cry. For as soft as she was most of the time, she never cried.

“How’s Dad?” Kaidan asked eventually, after they’d gotten past the greetings.

“He’s okay… he’s okay. He’s still in the hospital, of course, but he’ll be out soon. We can go over later tonight, if you’d like.” There was a pause, because it was the sort of question that didn’t need an answer. “I’ll leave the door unlocked for you, Kai. Whenever you’re ready, you come by.”

It wasn’t a matter of being ready, really, but Kaidan said ‘okay’ anyway, and then ‘I love you,’ and ‘goodbye.’ He had no idea what the condo or the neighbourhood was going to look like, but Mom was out there all the same so that’s where he’d go.

He managed to arrange a shuttle ride with a few officers who were heading out to Coal Harbour to start their shifts out at the HQ reconstruction. They traded idle banter on the way over, and Kaidan was fairly sure they knew exactly who he was, and what ship he served on, but they had the courtesy not to ask him about it. They dropped him off first, and he saluted them before they pulled away, because it felt like the thing to do. He gestured to the doorman of his parent’s building as he walked in, though it wasn’t he same older guy that it’d been for the last few years. But the new guy let him in anyway, maybe because of the fatigues or maybe he just guessed that Kaidan had family upstairs. When he reached his parents’ suite, he knocked twice before letting himself in.

He barely had time to shut the door behind him before Mom was on him, gripping him tightly about the shoulders and laying a hand on the back of his head, just above his implant scar. She’d always touched him there as a kid, but he never really knew if it was a conscious motherly thing or not. He suspected it was, but he didn’t ask about it; it didn’t matter because it still felt good either way. He squeezed her back and kissed her cheek when she pulled away.

“You look… good, Kaidan. Better than I’d expected.”

Kaidan set down his duffel and gave her a small smile. “Got a few new scars, but nothing major.”

He followed Mom into the condo. It looked the same, but the view outside was a bit different, the skyline showing a few gaps.

“It’s a lot better than I thought it would be,” Kaidan said has he moved to the window that faced east, towards the rest of the city. “How long have you been back?”

He could hear Mom in the kitchen, probably making some tea. “Since Thursday. It took a little while to get out of the interior, but we took Dad straight to the hospital, and I’ve been here since Friday.”

“Which hospital?”

“Vancouver General,” Mom answered, idly setting out two mugs on the counter.

***

They went to visit Dad later that evening, and the three of them ate dinner together in Dad’s room. Dad was propped up in bed, still as tall and straight-backed as ever, but with a little less mass. He didn’t look older, necessarily – just different, not himself. Mom sat at the end of the bed, one foot tucked up under herself, her tray balanced on one knee, and Kaidan sat next to the bed, his chair pulled up close.

“Food’s crap in here,” Dad mumbled.

“Better than vitamin bars and freeze-dried yogurt,” Kaidan replied. The food wasn’t great, but it wasn’t as bad as what they’d had on the Normandy, either.

“Of course it is,” Mom said, before adding, “your dad’s just sore that he’s still laid up in here.”

“How much longer?” Kaidan asked, looking at Dad.

Dad shrugged and took a drink of water from the disposable cup on his tray. “Another few days, they tell me.”

When they’d walked into VGH that night, Kaidan had tried to see into as many rooms as possible, hoping for a glimpse of Shepard. He knew she was probably in ICU still, but that didn’t stop him from checking the rooms he’d missed on the way out anyway, or from repeating the same ritual every day after that when he went to visit Dad.

***

A week later, on the first Tuesday since he’d gotten back to Earth, Dad was home and Kaidan told him and Mom about Shepard. Not the same old official stories that were being broadcast on the Alliance News Network every hour, but the real stuff, that no one else had seen. He didn’t tell them everything, though – he wanted to leave some stories untold, so that she could tell them herself, eventually, hopefully soon.

And then Mom had smiled at him, and she squeezed his knee before she got up and disappeared down the hall. She came back a few minutes later, a small dark wood box in her hand. She pressed it into Kaidan’s palm, and when he carefully opened it, she finally let a few tears fall. It was quick, and she stopped as soon as Dad took hold of the same hand that she’d held the box with, which Kaidan was thankful for. The sight of his mom crying, and of the ring that glinted up at him from his palm would’ve been entirely too much together.

The ring was old, from at least the turn of the century. It’d been Mom’s engagement ring, and then Nana’s before her. And now it’d be Selina’s, soon enough. Even if it was an heirloom, originally bought for someone entirely different, he thought it’d suit her pretty well, even if he didn’t really know how all that sort of thing worked.

It  had a thin, white gold ( _not_  silver, as Mom had quickly corrected him) band, with a circular-cut pale blue stone – aquamarine, apparently – with smaller diamonds set around the outer edge and down the sides of the band. It was delicate, and Kaidan was pretty sure that the stone would work well with Selina’s eyes, but he’d have to see up close to be sure. It wasn’t the sort of thing you’d wear under a hardsuit, but she wouldn’t need to wear it all the time. He wasn’t nervous that she’d dislike it – he was sure she’d love it. But maybe it was just a natural sort of thing, to feel anxious about it anyway.

***

Kaidan got a call from Hackett eight days later, early on Wednesday morning. Shepard had been awake at some point in the night, and after a bunch of tests, the doctors had cleared her for visitation. It was so early when Kaidan got that call, but he didn’t care about how little sleep he’d gotten; sleep was a secondary concern, an afterthought. He showered quickly, and got dressed in plainclothes, not fatigues. Whatever pair of jeans he’d taken from the Normandy and a light sweater. It wasn’t a conscious decision, really – it’d been a few weeks now since he’d worn the fatigues, and he’d finally gotten used to the feeling of the civvies.

Hackett had sent transport for him, with taxis still not running. It was a long ride, longer than he remembered it being before, visiting Dad. He checked in at the front desk of the hospital, gripping the edge of the counter tightly to still his fingers. Hackett had called ahead there too, and Kaidan was escorted quickly through the hospital, and he made a mental note to get the admiral the most expensive bottle of scotch that could still be found, given everything.

The attendant had paused outside of Shepard’s room, and had advised Kaidan to brace himself. She hadn’t elaborated, but he hadn’t really needed her to; he figured it’d be bad.

And it was. There were tubes everywhere, connecting her to IVs and machines. She was covered in bandages, hiding burns where her jumpsuit had melted away and the hot metal of her hardsuit had settled against her skin. Her black hair, normally past her shoulders, was cropped short just past her chin, and Kaidan thought that if that was going to be the only thing she’d lose, then that was okay. She was whole, and breathing, and _alive_.

She was asleep, her head lolled slightly to the side, facing the door. Kaidan moved to sit next to her, pulling the chair as close to the bed as he could. He wanted to touch her, to hold her hand, but he didn’t – she looked so fragile, and he didn’t want to jar her, or the moment.

It was still early in the morning, and he fell asleep before long, his head resting on his arms crossed on the edge of the mattress next to her hip. He awoke a while later to the quietest noise from her, some sort of whimper. His head shot up at the sound, and then her eyes slowly blinked open.

No longer asleep, she didn’t look quite as fragile. He took her hand gently in his, and held it against his forehead. And he cried, letting out a few desperate gasps before he was able to make himself stop. He leaned in to kiss her forehead, barely letting his lips touch her, but it was enough. She looked up at him with her half-lidded eyes, and she smiled at him, the faintest tug at the corner of her mouth, and he kissed her there too.

Her voice was hoarse, barely there, but that was okay – they didn’t need to talk just yet. It was enough for him now to see her breathing and looking back at him with her pale blue eyes, a little bloodshot still around the edges. He hadn’t brought he ring with him – there’d be time for that yet – but he knew then that it’d suit her perfectly.


	30. Future

Kaidan can scarcely believe it, but it's been eight months since he first laid eyes on Shepard after London. He double checks the date sometimes, whatever day it happens to be, when he starts thinking about the time frame. It's been a slow process – slow, and painful. There have been daily visits to her bedside, and having to leave her there once visiting hours ended – if he couldn't manage to sneak past the overnight nurses. He's learned her physiotherapy exercises alongside her, because they'll be just another item on the growing list of necessary things that she won't be able to do on her own for a while. But most importantly, he's been finding ways to occupy her mind, to stop her thoughts from drifting back to London and everything that came after it.

He still doesn't know all of the details, and he suspects that maybe he never will, but that doesn't matter. Left to her own devices for too long, she has a tendency to fold in on herself, sometimes so tightly that Kaidan can't help but wonder if  _this time_ will be the time that he can't pry his way back through to her.

And now she's out of the hospital, but it's more than just that. She's  _home_. Kaidan keeps catching himself silently rolling the word around on his tongue, testing the weight of it and seeing how it feels. The apartment they share is just a rental, but after everything, it's all they really want for now, and it's good. At first, he had to adjust to simply just living there, instead of on the Normandy, and now he's trying to get used to seeing Shepard propped up on the bed that he'd been sleeping on alone for so many months. But it's an adjustment that he's happy to make, of course, and he doesn't ever try to resist the smile that twists his lips whenever he sees her there.

For the first few weeks, it was hard to make her keep still. She felt stronger than she really was, and sometimes it took a while for her stubborn body to be reminded of the fact. More than a few times, he's laid down with her for a nap, and woken up an hour or two later to find her puttering around somewhere, lifting something that's too heavy or twisting with too wide a range of motion, and he's had to intervene. She was used to being  _Commander_ Shepard, and having her hands in everything going on around her ship. It's taken some time, but he's been able to get it through to her that the apartment isn't an Alliance frigate, but just a simple one-bedroom-and-den.

Eventually Kaidan went back to work, when he could finally get Shepard to promise to take it easy, without her fingers crossed behind her back. Most of his Spec Ops team survived the ordeal with the Reapers, and he was thrilled to be with them again. It was a change of pace, from the war and from the role of at-home nurse that he'd taken up more recently, but it was a welcome change. He was eager for the chance to take everything he'd witnessed at BAat, and do the complete opposite for his Company.

Shepard would be back to work soon enough, Kaidan can guess that much. It doesn't help Shepard's intended  _slow_ recovery to know that a position with the N7 is being held for her, whenever she's ready to take it. The weekly vidcalls from Vega, reminding Shepard that he's waiting for her to finally show up and be his CO again, probably haven't been helping matters much either.

It's an adjustment for them both, to be sure. And it's more than just adjusting to life after the chaos of war. It's life planet side, docked and on solid ground for more than a few days' shore leave. The increasing normalcy of it all is thrilling in itself for Kaidan, and he can tell by the smile that Shepard wears more and more often that she finds the same thrill in it. The apartment is only a few blocks from the rebuilt Alliance HQ, and they can see it from their living room, but there's still a separation at the end of each day – or at least for as long as the omni-tools are left switched off. There are other things in their lives now – chores, and grocery lists, and quiet evenings spent watching all the vids that had come out over the last three and a half years while they were on the far side of a mass relay. And to Kaidan, getting to know Selina through these simple, every day activities is the most exciting part of it all.

And then there are the bigger things, like the wedding. They don't talk about it much, not as anything tangible – it's more of an abstract, something that they both know is there and isn't going anywhere. Kaidan's reminded of it when he helps Selina with her physio exercises, and he sees the pale blue stone of the ring glinting back up at him whenever her palms are laid out on the floor to brace herself, but it doesn't come up much, otherwise; it doesn't need to. It's something for the future, and for now, they're both content with the simple fact that they've got a future to have.

Mom and Dad aren't far away – about fifteen minutes on foot. Kaidan and Selina take the walk over about once a week, to enjoy the balcony and the view and the company. The view from his parents' balcony is almost the same as he's always remembered it. The skyline may have changed somewhat under the weight of the Reapers, but the mountains still curve around and frame the city in the same way that they always have, and the Pacific Ocean still stretches out from English Bay into Deep Cove and beyond, out to where there aren't any boundaries placed on it, in the same way that it always has.

The Reapers had never been able to alter the height of those mountains or the depth of that water. And Kaidan knows that the mountains and the ocean are just two parts of the small collection of things that he can call upon and use to ground himself, whenever he gets too wrapped up in thinking about what they all so narrowly avoided. And when he turns away from his parents' view, he sees the three people that round out that collection. They've always been the constants in his life, in varying ways and for varying lengths of time, but they've all been there, and they'll continue to be.

And that, for whatever it's worth, isn't something that Kaidan needs to adjust to.


End file.
